Psychoanalysis 
and Sociology 



Psychoanalysis 
and Sociology 



By 

Aurel Kolnai 



Translated by Eden and Cedar Paul 



I 



NEW YORK 
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY 

1922 






Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2011 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/psychoanalysissoOOkoln 






TABLE OF CONTENTS 



PART ONE 

SOCIOLOGICAL RESULTS OF 
PSYCHOANALYSIS 

PAGE 

Chapter One : Psychoanalysis and Sociology . 9 

„ Two : Analysis of the Mass Mind . 20 

„ Three : Beginnings of Cultural De- 
velopment . . -34 

„ Four : Social Organisation and the 

Individual . . -45 



PART TWO 
SOCIOLOGICAL TASKS OF PSYCHOANALYSIS 

Chapter One : General Considerations . . 87 

,, Two : Attempt at the Psychoanalysis 

of Anarchist Communism . 104 

I. Definitions . . . .104 



PAGE 



6 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 
Chapter Two — (continued) 

II. Anarchist Sociology . . .no 

III. Psychical Characteristics of Anarchism 116 

IV. Psychical Characteristics of Com- 



Glossary 





mumsm 


. 124 


V. 


The Position of the Proletariat 


. 132 


VI. 


Infantile El Dorado Fantasy 


of 




Communism 


• 139 


VII. 


Origins of Proletarian Ideology 


. 148 


VIII. 


Marxism as a Social Psychosis 


• 157 


IX. 


Bolshevism 


. 166 


X. 


Conclusion 


• 174 


Y 




. 181 



PART ONE 

SOCIOLOGICAL RESULTS OF 
PSYCHOANALYSIS 



CHAPTER ONE 

PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

OUR view of the relationship between 
psychoanalysis and sociology will be 
mainly determined by our view of the rela- 
tionship between the individual and society. 
Direct sociological applications of psycho- 
analysis are impracticable unless the forces 
which dominate the mental life of the individual 
likewise exercise a decisive influence in the 
life of society, or at least unless social happen- 
ings are deducible from individual behaviour. 
But apart from the consideration that psycho- 
analysis has not yet effected a comprehensive 
differential study of the individual, the in- 
vestigator may well be restrained from any 
such attempt by his recognition of the unique 
nature of society. 

Psychoanalysis, therefore, is still far from 
exercising an exhaustive or even an extensive 
influence in the domain of sociology. Never- 
theless, it is undeniable that even to-day 
psychoanalysis, leaving its own immediate 



10 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

field to enter the field of social science, can 
render here services of considerable impor- 
tance. 

Apart from this, there is an indirect but 
more promising point of contact between the 
two disciplines. The point is interesting were 
it only because psychoanalysis is in this matter 
sharply distinguished from the other branches 
of psychology, and acquires in this connexion 
a character peculiar to itself. I refer to those 
achievements of psychoanalysis which elucidate 
the part played by society in individual 
development. Psychoanalytic study has gone 
far to convince us that purely individual 
psychological categories are solely explicable 
through their relationships to the environing 
community. In this way psychoanalysis, 
without propounding the priority of society 
in any metaphysical sense, has been led to 
recognise the existence of an intimate mutual 
determinism between individual and society. 
Psychoanalysts, indeed, have been much 
occupied with the study of this mutual deter- 
minism, though not so much from the stand- 
point of society as from that of the indi- 
vidual, and above all from that of the 
psychopath. 

At the outset, psychoanalysis was nothing 
more than a branch of psychiatry. Now our 



PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 11 

science has greatly transcended these limits, 
not only in a psychological direction, but 
also in a sociological direction. The causes 
of these new developments are various. The 
most important point of all is that psycho- 
analysis is avowedly aphysiological, that one 
of the main impulses to its development has 
come from those who were satiated with 
phrase-making concerning the " nervous 
system " and the " nerve centres." In addi- 
tion, psychoanalysis is ametaphysical, in so 
far as its essence lies in the descent into a 
stratum of facts with which no one has 
hitherto been systematically concerned. Con- 
sequently it has become necessary to throw 
a new light upon the mutual relationships 
of individuals. 

Nevertheless, analytical treatment is pre- 
dominantly social in character, since it does 
not consist of physical influences, but of 
the psychical collaboration of another human 
being, the physician. It is true that the 
same assertion might be made of all branches 
of psychotherapeutics. But there is an ob- 
vious and important distinction. Other 
methods of psychotherapeutics endeavour to 
work through persuasion, suggestion, hyp- 
nosis ; they do not aim at unlocking and 
rebuilding the suffering soul, but at its mechani- 



12 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

cal guidance. Now the whole spirit of psy- 
choanalysis is not mechanical but organic. 
Psychoanalysis is not sorcery but work. 
Society manifests itself quite differently in 
the analyser and in the hypnotist respectively ; 
utterly different is the aspect of individuality 
in the subject of psychoanalysis and in the 
subject of suggestion. The act of persuasion 
is as it were pseudorationalistic, external, 
and physical; the act of psychoanalysis is 
as it were intensely rationalistic, internal, 
and social. 

The achievements which concern the re- 
lationships between morbid and normal minds 
have a definite bearing upon sociological 
questions, for psychoanalysis discloses the 
motives that operate in the normal no less 
than in the morbid mind. But further, from 
a new side, they exercise a disruptive influence 
upon existing systems. Thus psychoanalysis 
facilitates, not only the sociological study of 
the mind, but also the observation of inter- 
psychical reactions. 

Finally, the free and emancipated spirit of 
psychoanalysis is a stream which penetrates 
the barriers erected — mainly for affective 
reasons — between the individual mind and 
the community. Psychoanalytical researches 
in the domain of the sexual life throw a clear 



PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 13 

light upon the final enigma of the unity and 
separateness of the individual and society, 
upon the cleavage between the interindividual 
affective trends, upon the problems of the 
cleavage between the individual and the two- 
fold " sociality." A recognition of the in- 
timate connexion between individual and social 
organisation will be facilitated by that spirit 
which, transcending every previous progressive 
thought, points to inward freedom as the 
correlate of outward freedom. The same 
spirit leads to the unprejudiced study of 
collective ideas, convictions, and practices. 
It likewise involves enfranchisement from 
the materialistic obscurantism of recent 
decades. 

The question now arises, With which socio- 
logical trend is psychoanalysis most in har- 
mony ? I am not concerned with my own 
immediate viewpoint, but am discussing gener- 
alities. In my view, psychoanalysis, whose 
primary aim and method must always remain 
those of individual psychology, cannot aspire 
to a dominant role in sociology. But it can 
render valuable and almost indispensable 
services to specialised sociology. Indeed, the 
expert sociologist must be animated by a 
spirit closely akin to that of the psychoanalyst. 
He must be unprejudiced, but must not 



14 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

rest content with the simple accumulation of 
facts. He must study the nature of social 
organisation, the position which the individual 
occupies in society. Sociology must not 
shrink from becoming the basis of a political 
method, and yet in this respect the roles 
must not be reversed ; sociology must be 
careful to avoid the mysticism of premature 
simplification. It is obvious, moreover, that 
psychoanalysis in its present form (being far 
more concerned with typical contents which 
have been brought to the surface than with 
important groupings relating to some great 
future) can be most readily linked with a 
sociology dealing, not with the distinctive 
peculiarities of individual civilised commu- 
nities, but with the universal categories of 
social life. 

An important question is that of aim, the 
aim which primarily differentiates politics from 
sociology. The original aim of psychoanalysis 
was extremely simple ; the cure of the patient. 
The aim of politics cannot be so tersely defined. 
Of late, however, the idea of psychoanalysis 
has undergone expansion. It aims at securing 
for the individual a better balance, at bringing 
about a better adaptation to the environment, 
at establishing a higher rationality, and pro- 
ducing a more perfect harmony. But this is 



PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 15 

precisely the aim which politics should pursue 
in relation to the community. As we have 
already suggested, these two aims cannot 
remain independent. There are no men with- 
out institutions, and there are no institutions 
without men. The observer may be especially 
concerned either with men or with institutions, 
but he must not fail to take the other element 
into the reckoning. Psychoanalysis, there- 
fore, while it need have nothing to do 
with political party programs, must be in 
spiritual touch with some fundamental political 
trend. 

Psychoanalysis is yet more intimately re- 
lated to certain social aims which, though 
political, are not political in the narrower 
sense of that term. I refer to sexual reforms, 
the reform of family life, and the reform of 
education. The connexion of psychoanalysis 
with these things is a matter both of form 
and of content, for we are here concerned 
with influences which society exercises on the 
individual. Insistence upon the enormous im- 
portance of childhood is a fundamental part 
of Freudian psychology. The Freudians de- 
mand extensive changes in pedagogy as part 
of the campaign against mental disorder. 
Psychoanalysts point out that reform in this 
field is no mere matter of the provision of 



16 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

hospitals and cispensaries, but that remoter 
causes are operative. 

We can distinguish three sociological trends 
of psychoanalytical research. In the first of 
these, a socio-individual parallelism is demon- 
strable, so that the contents of individual 
ideas are discoverable in collective ideas. I 
refer, in a word, to the so-called folk psy- 
chology. The second trend is that in which 
the individual psychological foundations of 
social development or of civilisation constitute 
the object of study, so that we now find 
ourselves somewhat more deeply involved in 
the realm of sociology. These investigations 
are likewise concerned with primitive con- 
ditions, but their starting-point is the formation 
of society out of the individual and the family. 
The third trend is that of psychoanalysis 
proper, with its various radiations. Here we 
are concerned with the individual in his 
relations to extant society, and therefore with 
the organisation and the actual problems of 
society. To this domain belong analytical 
therapy, the analysis of healthy persons, family 
life, pedagogy, the problems of individualism 
and socialism. 

From the purely sociological standpoint, 
the second trend might be considered the 
most important ; though only as regards the 



PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 17 

object of study, and not as regards its nature. 
Psychoanalysis tends especially to throw light 
on relationships in so far as it discloses the 
part played by society in shaping the modern 
individual. It makes more extensive con- 
tributions to sociology when it remains within 
its own sphere than when it displays a directly 
sociological trend. I hope in the present 
work to give an empirical demonstration of 
this assertion. It is, however, an illuminating 
fact that the various sub-departments just 
enumerated are separable by barriers which, 
however necessary, are purely artificial. 
Furthermore, it is necessary to state how 
far I propose to go in the interpretation of 
the material. 

Since I regard psychoanalysis from a specific 
outlook, and even within this sphere look 
upon it as the manifestation of a specific 
trend, I cannot use its results in the crude 
state. But although I assume a certain free- 
dom in this respect, I do so neither as critic 
of psychoanalysis, nor that I may supplement 
it or continue its work. I may merely find 
it necessary to interpret certain psycho- 
analytical results in a way which the investi- 
gator who has furnished those results might 
reject. I do not think that this will be a 
general practice, for on broad lines, alike in 

2 



18 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

respect of form and content, I stand intellect- 
ually and affectively upon the platform of 
psychoanalysis. I do this equally as against 
opponents of the doctrine and as against the 
members of the divergent schools. I hope, 
indeed, that I shall nowise do violence to psy- 
choanalysis. 

Let me remark parenthetically that I am 
convinced of the need, not merely for criticism 
along certain lines, but also for expansion 
and for new applications. Such an inde- 
pendent expansion of psychoanalytical soci- 
ology may be the topic of a later work, mainly 
devoted to the study of certain phases of 
modern social and political life. 

It is further necessary to point out that the 
subject of the present book is not one which 
simply concerns the relationship between psy- 
choanalysis and ethics. It is true that I do 
not exclude the discussion of moral elements, 
but it is necessary to. keep strictly within the 
limits assigned to my study. Whereas political 
and similar movements have to do with the 
purposive moulding of social organisation and 
with the relationships of the individual to the 
community, ethics is concerned with individu- 
ality and with the mutual relationships of 
individuals. The difference relates to emphasis 
rather than to the existence of objects. But 



PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 19 

the distinction cannot be eliminated, and we 
must be careful not to forget the fact. The 
present study will not be primarily concerned 
with ethical relationships, nor ' indeed will 
ethics receive even provisional consideration. 



CHAPTER TWO 

ANALYSIS OF THE MASS MIND 

ONLY within limits does there exist a 
parallelism between the individual mind 
and the social mind. These limits determine 
how far the mechanism of individual ideas 
can be transferred to the social sphere. Why, 
for example, is an infantile sexual theory 
rediscoverable in a myth ? Why can a states- 
man's political theory be reflected, in notable 
fashion though with hazy outlines, in the 
ideology of his own party ? Why is it so easy 
to discern inspectionism in the most varied 
manifestations of folk psychology, whereas it 
would be extremely difficult to effect the 
psychoanalysis of an industrial theory ? (I 
am not speaking here of the assertions of 
psychoanalysis, but of psychoanalysis in its 
fundamental nature ; interpretation must set 
out from this.) The most obvious answer 
would seem to be that psychoanalysis can 
elucidate the more general constructions of 

20 



ANALYSIS OF THE MASS MIND 21 

folk psychology. Can it, however, be con- 
tended that this applies to the two or three 
main political trends of our day, which are 
general enough at any rate ? We see that 
the hypothesis is incomplete, if not radically 
false. Inadequate, too, would be the asser- 
tion that psychoanalysis does not avail where 
interests and the ego impulses manifest 
themselves. The analysis of warlike heroism 
would not be a difficult task, although 
the analysis of certain trends in contem- 
porary sexual life might certainly prove more 
laborious. 

We should approximate far more closely to 
the truth were we to contend that psycho- 
analysis is empowered to interpret compara- 
tively simple collective ideas. I think chiefly 
of practically universal ideas, which are simple, 
and are not dependent upon any of the 
differentiations among human beings : of the 
more or less obvious complications and sym- 
bolisations of incest ; of the fundamental 
partial impulses of the sexual life ; of the 
relationship to other members of the family ; 
of ambivalence ; of the omnipotence of 
thought. It is especially worthy of note that 
the mechanism of collective ideas exhibits 
striking analogy with the mechanism of 
dreams, mental disorders, and even some of 



22 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

the products of contemporary literature. 1 
Psychoanalysis has demonstrated a parallel- 
ism between the more primitive groups of 
individual and social ideas, and has shown 
how this parallelism manifests itself, not merely 
in vague and mechanical forms of thought, 
but likewise in typical elaborations of uni- 
versal content. Thereby is furnished an 
almost definitive refutation of the sociological 
relativism which would ascribe profoundly 
and significantly diverse worlds of thought 
to the various races or culture-groups. This 
achievement may prove of considerable im- 
portance in politics no less than in soci- 
ology. 

The other main result is the proof that the 
purely collective ideas which originate from 
the . simple summation or communalisation 
of the thoughts of individuals, are dominant 
at a low level. Psychoanalysis teaches us 
that mental disorders are disturbances of the 
adaptation to the extant form of society, are 
regressions to lower stages, whereas dreams 

1 The stratification of higher literary products is somewhat 
complicated, but is nevertheless analysable. Cf. S. Freud, 
Der Wahn und die Traume in W. Jensens Gradiva, 2nd 
edition, Vienna and Leipzig, 191 2. — Delusion and Dream : 
an Interpretation in the Light of Psychoanalysis of Gradiva, 
a Novel by William Jensen, Moffat, New York, 1917. — Allen 
and Unwin, London, 1921. 



ANALYSIS OF THE MASS MIND 23 

are normal forms of similar regressions, cut 
off from motor activity. Even the products 
of art and literature are based upon regression, 
though with an upward tending (anagogic) 
aspect. 1 

These regressions coalesce with primitive 
social ideas. There is an inward connexion 
between the collectivity (or rather the com- 
munity) of individual ideas, and the primitive 
state. This is one of the main pillars of 
Durkheim's theory of social solidarity. 2 In 
his view, the lower form of solidarity is 
the one based upon or associated with a 
similarity of the individuals which com- 
pose it, and based upon the identity of 
their ideologies. This is a mechanical or 
religious solidarity. It is mechanical because 
it presupposes a propulsive general ideology. 
It is religious, because religion implies a 
belief that is accepted in the same inter- 
pretation by all the members of a particular 
community. 

To Durkheim's theory, based mainly upon 
juristic philosophy, and to the general evo- 

1 Cf. H. Silberer, Probleme der Mystik und ihrer Symbolik, 
Vienna and Leipzig, 1914. Introversion und Wiedergeburt, 
passim. — Problems of Mysticism and its Symbolism, Moffat, 
New York, 1917. 

2 E Durkheim, De la division du travail social, 3rd 
edition, Paris, 191 1. 



24 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

lutionary theory, psychoanalysis superadds a 
third. Evolution deals exclusively with self- 
evident entities. Durkheim speaks only of 
institutions, and does not aim at a more 
intimate comparison between the world of 
individual thought and the world of social 
thought. This gap is rilled in by psycho- 
analysis, which thus furnishes the most valu- 
able support to Durkheirn's sociological 
conception. 

Psychoanalysis furnishes interesting aid to 
Durkheirn's criticism of Spencer's classification 
of society. Durkheirn's " mechanical soli- 
darity " does not correspond to the Spencerian 
" militant society." Centralisation is already 
a beginning of specialisation, a beginning of 
the solidarity that is founded on the division 
of labour. The primitiveness of society is 
characterised by uniformity of ideologies, and 
not by warlike institutions. Psychoanalysis 
secured this result by ascertaining and stressing 
the contents of the mind, and thus led to a 
more immanent and steadfast theory of social 
evolution. Analytical research has shown that 
the fundamental complexes exercise an in- 
fluence in the social structures that are most 
important to organisation, in religions for 
instance. Thus the root of primitive social 
homogeneity is not to be found in militarist 



ANALYSIS OF THE MASS MIND 25 

centralisation, 1 but in some sort of " primal 
unity " in which there has subsequently taken 
place a differentiation of the individuals from 
one another and from society. 

This view is concreted in the detailed results 
of psychoanalytical study. They show us that 
the leading material of homogeneity and fix- 
ation, of the mechanical socio-individual 
parallelism, consists of sexuality. Now, to 
speak with crude simplicity, if there be one 
thing antecedent to the individual and to 
society, one thing which embraces within 
itself the potency both of individual and of 
society, it is the " germ plasm," the sexual 
part of mankind, the " species." It is the 
species, too, which remains the identical ele- 
ment in individual and society. From the 
species issues the new individual which, during 
the first years of life, apart from his ego 
rudiment, reminds us so strongly of primitive 
man. The specious plasticity and the inner 
fixity of primitive men are reflected in 
the manifold psychical constructions of the 
neuroses and the psychoses, with their un- 
mistakable mimicry of the primitive. 

The further interpretation of sexuality sup- 
plies much that is new and important. In 

1 The psychoanalytical significance of militarism will be 
briefly discussed in the sequel. 



26 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

the light of psychoanalysis, the desire for 
incestuous sexual activity would seem to be 
general and central. Oedipus is the most 
noted hero in the sagas of all ages. C. G. Jung 
maintains that the only reality in the incest 
wish is the trend, the reversion and the intro- 
version. This may be more or less true. 
There can, however, be no doubt, that the 
incest tendency is either the most pregnant 
form or else the most expressive symbol of 
the reversion from the individual and social 
being into the being of the species. Psycho- 
analysis testifies to the effect that the mani- 
festation of this universal wish, of the struggle 
that is carried on against it, and of the result- 
ant compromises, constitutes the most widely 
diffused content of collective ideas, and is at 
the same time the chief sustainer of homo- 
geneity. 

The relationship to the family is obviously 
associated with the incest motif. First of all, 
we have maternal incest as the type of all 
incestuous trends, influencing the relationship 
of the son to the father. Here a compli- 
cation arises. The incest wish is in itself 
perfectly simple ; but the relationship to the 
father simultaneously exhibits the twofold 
characters of love and hatred, and is thus 
ambivalent. In the various individual and 



ANALYSIS OF THE MASS MIND 27 

social psychical products, however, it exhibits 
a uniformity almost equal to that of the 
incest wish. Its increased lability ! is con- 
nected with the circumstance that it has 
somewhat less to do with the species and 
somewhat more to do with social organisation. 
Ambivalence, psychical conflict, repression, 
projection, and symbolisation, as psychical 
forms ; modified forms of sexual partial im- 
pulses, and the coexistent ego impulses, as 
psychical contents — all demand further con- 
sideration. As will appear later, these pheno- 
mena are of social origin. This, however, does 
not by any means signify that they cannot 
manifest themselves as parts of the ideology 
of a whole community in, default of the 
influence of an external (more powerful) com- 
munity. Through the similarity of indivi- 
duals, through the mechanical uniformity 
which is the outcome of their interrelations, 
their ideas are simply welded together to 
form collective ideas, of course with certain 
modifications. Repression is not consciously 
effected by any collective organ ; it applies 
to the primitive community no less than to 

1 For the quadruple form in which the ideas of god and 
devil may represent the relationship between father and 
son, cf. Ernest Jones, Uer Alptraum, etc., Leipzig and Vienna, 
1912, p. 81. 



28 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

the individual members of that community. 
With progressive differentiation, this confor- 
mity tends to disappear, persisting most con- 
spicuously in respect of the previously enu- 
merated psychical contents. Similar is the 
behaviour of projection ; and also of symboli- 
sation, which may be broadly viewed as a 
stabilisation of projection. In accordance 
with Otto Rank's train of reasoning, the most 
characteristic feature of the symbol is its 
independence of individuals. 1 This is an 
empirical truth, proved by psychoanalytical 
researches. From these we learn, in addition, 
that the dominion of the species, that homo- 
geneity, can maintain itself, not alone directly 
in the impulses, but also in their general and 
systematic modifications. Advancing some- 
what further in our psychological study, we 
find that it is impossible to subsume the lower 
and the higher stages of society in two cate- 
gories merely, that of a free life on the one 
hand, and that of repression on the other. 
We find that we must not neglect certain 
intermediate qualitative elements. 

To avoid misunderstanding, I must point 
out that collective symbolisations, as alle- 
gorical guiding ideas, must not be confused 

1 Otto Rank, Psychoanalytische Beitrage zur Mythenfor- 
schung, Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag, 1919, p. 37. 



ANALYSIS OF THE MASS MIND 29 

with the purely emblematic technical symbols 
which flourish concomitantly with civilisation. 
But this discussion would lead beyond the 
limits of the present work. 

Let us turn, therefore, to the greater unities 
among collective ideas. Myth and fable are 
typical in this respect. Magic, religion, thought- 
trends, are of a different character, for all 
these have an economic basis. They are 
closely connected with the organisation of 
society, and they therefore fail to exhibit any 
notable parallelism with the individual. Myth 
and fable, on the other hand, are the negatives 
of cultural development. 1 Myth is a more or 
less disguised wish fulfilment. The writings 
of Rank, in especial, have drawn attention to 
the close analogy between, myth and the 
individual's dreams. This analogy is much 
more perfect, though perhaps less fruitful, 
than the analogy between religion and com- 
pulsion neurosis. The analogy between the 
myth and the dream finds expression in 
analytical literature far more readily and 
consistently, but arouses fewer problems. What 
is the meaning of this ? In the life of the 
individual, the dream has no organic or posi- 
tive part to play. Its function largely consists 
in a discharge, in the relief of a sort of psychical 

1 Rank, op. cit., p. 380. 



30 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

congestion. Its essential nature, as we might 
infer from its physiological determinants, is 
to withdraw the dreamer from his actual 
environment. Similarly with myth — if we 
understand by this term, not anything which 
can be called a religious conviction in the 
narrower sense, but something which has 
the nature of saga. Myth is a copy of the 
dream, inasmuch as myth looks wholly to- 
wards the past, and is " titanic " (Silberer). 
The persistent analogy between dream and 
myth affords additional proof of the primitive, 
specific unity of the individual and society. 
This furnishes additional justification for our 
sociological interpretation. Passing to con- 
sider fable, we find that Rank sharply dis- 
tinguishes it from myth. It is positively ethical, 
" anagogical," from the civic point of view ; 
it is conservative, though not retrograde ; it 
stresses the material factor. Consequently, to 
find a replica of fable in the individual would 
be less easy. Perhaps certain fantasies, con- 
scious fantasies for the most part, relating to 
an upward movement within existing con- 
ditions, deserve consideration in this connexion. 
Here, however, the exceptions will be notable, 
for the very reason that fable is less the product 
of the spirit of the species than of society as 
a whole. 



ANALYSIS OF THE MASS MIND 31 

We may note how the analogy with the 
dream loses its significance in so far as simple 
myth gives place to structurally important 
social phenomena. Ernest Jones demonstrates 
the " communalisation " of nightmare as a 
belief in ghosts, but forthwith proceeds to 
researches into matters comparatively remote 
from the individual, dealing with belief in the 
devil and with epidemics of witchcraft. 

Anent the before-mentioned parallelism, we 
encounter in extant analytical literature 
(though only in isolated cases) allusions to 
the formal problem of function, to the prob- 
lem of the normal and the pathological. 
In the comparison between religion and com- 
pulsion neurosis, it is les§. conspicuous ; 
although the view of those who imagined 
that religion could be dismissed as pure 
aberration because many of its theses were 
erroneous, has now become obsolete. When 
we consider the analogy between paranoia 
and the philosophical systems, this particular 
point assumes great importance. A philoso- 
phical system does not possess a preeminently 
social character ; that wherein it is distin- 
guished from the delusions of the paranoiac 
is to be found in its comparative accuracy 
and in the attendant circumstances. As we 
might have expected, psychoanalytical re- 



32 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

search has proved less illuminating here than 
in the case of religion and of compulsion 
neurosis. In this connexion, Freud, after his 
parallel study of the taboo religion and of 
the modern " taboo disease/' came to the 
conclusion that the neurotic is more altruistic 
and social than the primitive. Moreover, in 
the neurotic, the part played by sexual com- 
ponents is greater, and the impulses undergo 
more extensive transformation. 1 All this may 
be associated with the fact that our neurotic 
has undergone greater differentiation from 
the community (sociality being here by no 
means identical with social homogeneity), and 
that the system of repression is most powerful 
and persistent in the sexual domain. Once 
more we find confirmation of the view that 
the " species " displays amazing constancy, 
not only in its direct form, but likewise in 
its veiled and blurred form. 

Hitherto, for the most part, primitive social 
ideas, and not the regressions of contemporary 
society, have been compared with neurotic 
regressions. The reason has doubtless been 
that the individual, however much he may 
tower over the crowd, has been compelled by 
the laws of sex life to preserve the purely 

1 Freud, Totem und Tabu, Leipzig and Vienna, 1913, 
pp. 65, et seq. — Totem and Taboo, Routledge, London, 1919. 



ANALYSIS OF THE MASS MIND 33 

specific qualities far more perfectly than any 
social group has been compelled to preserve 
them. Nevertheless, Freud has made a pro- 
found study of the war psychosis that has 
been so prevalent during recent tragical years. 
He found that the hidden regression of that 
psychosis ran broadly parallel with regression 
in the ailing individual. 1 

As far as concerns socio-individual paral- 
lelism, the main result of psychoanalysis may, 
therefore, be summed up as follows. Whereas, 
hitherto, the idea of a mechanical solidarity 
based upon similarity has been a somewhat 
anaemic schema, and liable to misunderstand- 
ing, psychoanalysis has now filled in the out- 
line with a living psychological content. 

1 Freud, Zeitgemasses iiber Krieg und Tod, Sammlung 
kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, IV, Vienna, 191 8, p. 504. 






CHAPTER THREE 

BEGINNINGS OF CULTURAL 
DEVELOPMENT 

LIKE the individual, society, the fact 
of association, has its origin in the 
species, in the germ plasm. Association arises 
out of sexuality. This aspect of sexuality 
may be termed altruistic, in contradistinction 
to that which works on behalf of resistance 
to society and tends towards dissociation. 
Cooperation for the acquisition of food is 
secondary, and is the most important step 
in the differentiation of society from the 
species. Its existence, though perhaps only 
in the germ, must be presupposed in the 
stage from which psychoanalytical research 
takes its start, the stage of the primitive 
horde. 1 This is a family in the widest sense 
of the term, a family in which the father rules 
while the younger males must obey and are 

1 Cf. Freud, Totem und Tabu ; also T. Reik, Probleme 
der Religionspsychologie, I, Das Ritual, Vienna, 1919, 
passim. 

34 



CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT 35 

compelled by the patriarch to abstain from 
intercourse with the women of the horde. 
Such an organisation unquestionably rests 
upon a sexual foundation, but only in the sign 
of the ego impulses. Neither its origin nor 
its characteristics have been fully elucidated, 
but psychoanalysis has already sketched the 
emergence of cultural development from this 
stage. The psychoanalytical view runs as 
follows. It may have been a general occur- 
rence that the young adult males, the brethren 
of the horde, driven by their sexual impulse 
and by a certain primitively anarchical impulse 
towards freedom, shattered the rising social 
power with their own physical power. They 
killed the father, devoured him, and took 
possession of the women. Oedipus, therefore, 
was something more than the chief figure of 
mythology ; he was a widespread reality. 
Parricide and incest are the two chief sins. 
They constitute original sin, which Christ 
the Son, through His Passion, and symbolically 
becoming the victim of anthropophagy, atones 
before God the Father. 

How did original sin become a sin ? What 
happened after the murder of the father and 
after the break-up of the organisation ? There 
did not result, not permanently at any rate, 
the development of a community based upon 



36 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

equal rights and upon promiscuity. For one 
reason or another, the young men reestablished 
the old condition of affairs, characterised 
by patriarchal authority and the prohibition 
of incest. Exogamy became the form of sexual 
activity, and upon the position of the father 
a social institution and a religion were estab- 
lished (totemism). Why did this change come 
about ? Freud refers to a belated obedience, 
to which Rank likewise alludes as a mythical 
motif. 1 The significance of this is, that in 
the act of parricide only one tendency of their 
minds was dominant, whilst the other pole 
of their ambivalent attitude was temporarily 
repressed. Subsequently, however, the re- 
pressed trend once more gained the upper 
hand, doubtless through the influence of the 
new condition of affairs. We might perhaps 
imagine that the brethren recognised them- 
selves " not to be sufficiently advanced " 
to organise the horde without a patriarch. 
But this explanation would be too crudely 
rationalistic. Freud assumes that the brothers 
themselves wished to become fathers, and 
consequently came to honour, as the embodi- 
ment of the approved system, the father they 
had overthrown as a personal foe. In this 
form, of course, the matter becomes some- 

1 Freud, op. cit. ; Reik, op. cit., pp. 157, et seq. 



CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT 37 

what too automatic, and the interpretation 
is inadequate. 

If we contemplate the state of affairs more 
generally, and no longer as an isolated case, 
we find that the parricide was a shattering, 
a temporary regression, of the extant social 
organisation, and must have had a more 
specific cause than the general psychical state 
of the young males. For in the latter case 
the phenomena would have perpetually recurred 
in a revolt of the new sons against the new 
fathers. Even though the aforesaid specific 
cause should elude us, it will be evident that 
the new conditions created by expiation must 
be notably distinguished from the old con- 
ditions which preceded the parricide. Now 
this difference can have been nothing else 
than that to which Freud himself refers, 
namely, exogamy, and the beginnings of social 
integration. The old dominion of the father 
had been broken, but the destructive tendency, 
after its partial victory, was mastered by a 
new method of organisation. The primitive 
horde did not break up into new primitive 
hordes, but grew to form a more composite 
community, wherein a number of fathers 
possessing equal rights continued to live. Out 
of the primitive and still in large part physical 
patriarchal organisation, there developed a 



38 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

social patriarchal organisation. Both Freud 
and Reik emphasise the importance of the 
cooperation of the brethren, a cooperation 
which persists after the new stabilisation. 
Reik, in especial, draws attention to the fact 
that the son who has in his turn become a 
father may conjecture that his own father 
has returned in the shape of a new-born son. 
At least the appearance of the son compels 
him to assume a defensive attitude, and 
henceforward in his own interest to recognise 
paternal authority. 

This state of affairs becomes the kernel of 
totemism and of the consequent ritual. Totem- 
ism is the sanction of exogamy, and is the poten- 
tial repudiation of incest. It is the expression 
of the principle that those who are members 
of a narrower community must not enter 
into sexual relations. The animal which is 
the symbol of the clan, the animal which the 
members of the totem-clan are forbidden 
to hunt, represents the father. But as part 
of the ritual of the totemistic religion we have 
the slaying and eating of the animal which 
constitutes the totem. This occurs only on 
certain feast days, and serves to strengthen 
the cohesion of the members of the totem- 
clan. The revival of the repressed and for- 
gotten parricide does not take place in order 



CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT 39 

to break up the organisation once again, but 
in order to consolidate it by the symbolical 
repetition of its genesis. The subsequent rami- 
fications of the religious systems (and in part 
likewise of the systems of magic) are mani- 
festations of a similar kind brought about 
by further repression, fixation, and projec- 
tion. Important are Reik's statements con- 
cerning the couvade and the puberal rites. 
The couvade, the symbolical pretence of ill- 
ness on the part of the husband during the 
wife's pregnancy, aims at keeping the husband 
away from his wife and from his new-born 
child. Its purpose is to prevent the man's 
killing his son as the " returning father." 
But the separation of the husband from the 
pregnant wife is a radiation of the incest 
inhibition. The most important feature of 
the puberal rites is the withdrawal from 
woman and the family, this being a fixation, 
as it were a compulsion neurosis, which is 
a replica of the incest prohibition. At the 
same time, there is associated with these 
rites the adoption into the secret society of 
the males, and this signifies the young man's 
acceptance into the band of the brethren 
who are united against the father. The imita- 
tion of the old deeds, and the consequent 
reaction, thus fuse one with another, just as 



40 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

in the compromise formations of the individual 
there is a fusion of tendencies with repressions. 
From the social standpoint, this ritual resembles 
the totem-meal which assumes the burden 
of original sin, but it has an opposite purpose. 
Moreover, we must be careful to avoid think- 
ing that the system of these religious com- 
promise formations actually and decisively 
overcame the original antisocial primitive- 
ness. In the next chapter we shall under- 
take a fuller consideration of the significance 
of repression. 

Among all these researches, especially illumi- 
nating is that which reveals the connexion 
between the father and the social order. 
Here psychoanalysis once more confirms Durk- 
heim's sociology. According to this writer's 
theory of religion and totemism * — a theory 
to which Freud pays little attention in his 
book— the idea of the saint, of the super- 
natural, which underlies totemism no less than 
other forms of religion, is nothing else than 
the manifestation of the environing and guiding 
society in the consciousness of the individual. 
In the society of primitive solidarity, the 
society which rests upon the uniformity of 

1 Durkheim, Les formes elementaires de la vie religieuse, 
Paris, 19 1 2, passim. — The Elementary Forms of the Religious 
Life, Allen and Unwin, London, 1915. 



CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT 41 

the component individuals, the main integrat- 
ing force is some sort of idea which is identical 
in the minds of all the individual members. 
Formally speaking, it is the idea of the society 
itself. 

Durkheim concerns himself little about 
psychical content, for his outlook is pre- 
eminently sociological. From him, therefore, 
we cannot learn whether the content of the 
matter is that suggested above. Psycho- 
analytical study gives a very different picture. 
The father is the substantial representative 
of society, the person with whom the individual 
comes directly into contact. The first person 
with whom a child comes into contact in addi- 
tion to the mother, the one who incorporates 
the first and most important inhibitions and 
commands of society, is the father. Both 
the suppression of incest, and exogamic inte- 
gration, are effected under his sign. Now 
according to psychoanalytical results, the vic- 
tory of the father upon the wreckage of parri- 
cide is not wholly analogous in its significance 
to the victory of primitive social solidarity 
over the repudiation of any kind of solidarity. 
It already conceals a kernel of progress in 
the direction of a solidarising division of 
labour. There is no such thing as complete 
absence of solidarity. Incestuous and un- 



42 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

bridled sexuality, the " titanic '•■ state, the 
dominion of the species, signify the typical 
primitive solidarity. The organisation that 
is realised under the aegis of paternal authority 
carries with it already the beginnings of the 
division of labour. It does this all the more 
surely inasmuch as exogamy and the coming 
into touch with alien individualities are already 
displayed at this stage, and these in especial 
serve to set the forces of differentiation at 
work. They contain an element which directly 
conflicts with patriarchal dominion in the 
primitive horde. There gradually ensues a 
cleavage between father and society. In the 
course of cultural revolution and in virtue 
of a more complicated process of education, 
this cleavage grows ever more conspicuous. 

In this respect, too, psychoanalysis supports 
Durkheim's views as against those of Spencer. 
It shows that militarist society is not the 
lowest form of society, since in militarist 
society we already find the first elements 
of the division of labour, in virtue of which 
atomisation is replaced by differentiation, 
and merging in the species is replaced 
by integration. Psychoanalysis, too, is com- 
petent to answer the question, how a com- 
munity can keep itself holy (even though it 
does so unconsciously). According to Durk- 



CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT 43 

heim's idea, the individual members simply 
regard their society as holy, and because of 
their homogeneity, their faith becomes general. 
But Durkheim's fundamental notion is that 
a collective idea in every case possesses 
a quasi-independent character. This persis- 
tence of the idea of a supernatural quality, 
its retention in the communal consciousness, 
would be incomprehensible, had not the idea 
some concrete sustainer, to constitute no mere 
empty sign, but an essential content. Psycho- 
analysis discloses this sustainer ; it is the 
father. The " father " of the society, the 
totem-animal, or tribal god, cannot by any 
possible means be deduced psychologically 
from the idea of society — though Durkheim 
does not seem to have fully realised how signi- 
ficant this difficulty is. Bat when we under- 
stand the significance of the father-imago, the 
difficulty disappears. Furthermore, the totem- 
meal, as an act for the regeneration of religious 
solidarity, demands an explanatory key, which 
is supplied by psychoanalysis in the form of 
affective ambivalence and of the father com- 
plex. Psychoanalysis is unable to furnish 
a complete explanation of the way in which 
the physical power of the strongest male 
member of the family became transformed 
into the predominantly moral power of society 



44 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

and its authorities. Nevertheless, in this 
matter likewise, psychoanalysis can so far 
perform its task in that it fills in the outlines 
of formal sociology with the requisite ps}'- 
chological content. Working independently, 
Freud and Durkheim studied totemism, and 
achieved results which, as we have shown, 
practically supplement one another. Or per- 
haps it would be more correct to say that 
psychoanalysis, approaching the matter from 
without, supplements sociological research. 
Probably the agreement will ultimately prove 
at once more subtle and more profound. 
In any case, the extant results serve on the 
one hand to confirm Durkheim's sociological 
theories, and on the other to give enhanced 
weight to psychoanalytical results. We shall 
see that this conclusion is strengthened by the 
study of more immediately practical problems. 



CHAPTER FOUR 

SOCIAL ORGANISATION AND THE 
INDIVIDUAL 

AT the outset, psychoanalysis noted the 
influence which the social environment 
exercises upon the deeper strata of the in- 
dividual's mind. Although, in accordance 
with its primary aim, the attention of psycho- 
analysis was concentrated upon the organi- 
sation of the individual mind, and not upon 
the organisation of society, society came to 
occupy an increasingly large place in psycho- 
analytical material. The subsequent develop- 
ment of the science made it possible to attempt 
the solution of problems far transcending 
those which concern the individual alone. 

The psychoanalytical view of the mind is 
helpful in the elucidation of social relation- 
ships, were it only because psychoanalysts 
contemplate the mind in purely dynamic 
fashion, conceiving it as a system of action, 
and refusing to commit themselves to any 
physiological interpretation of the phenomena 

45 



46 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

they investigate. But where we have to do 
with actions, there a decisive influence must 
be exercised by that portion of the environ- 
ment which is associated with the individual 
mind, not physiologically, but without direct 
contact, in virtue of actions w T hich take place 
in the environment. This portion of the en- 
vironment is society, whose role in the mental 
life of the individual must not be interpreted 
as if its working were of a simple and obvious 
character. Everyone is aware that a con- 
siderable proportion of our actions and thoughts 
concerns our fellow men, and this truth may 
be confirmed by detailed investigations. But 
psychoanalysis has wider implications. It dis- 
closes the relationships of the individual mind, 
of its structure and nature, to society. In the 
psychoanalytical view, society does not simply 
supply a content for the psychical framework, 
but actually constructs this framework, and 
it does so in relation, not only to the moral 
but also to the mental constitution of the 
individual. 

Durkheim, discussing a fundamentally differ- 
ent topic and setting out from an entirely 
different starting-point, comes to the same 
conclusion. He ascribes a social origin, not 
only to religion, but also to the ideas of space, 
time, causality, and the group. His socio- 



SOCIAL ORGANISATION 47 

logism is more epistemological, whereas that 
of psychoanalysis is more psychological. This 
is because the movement of which Durkheim 
is the spokesman has to do with form rather 
than with content, whereas psychoanalysis 
deals with content rather than with form. 
Nevertheless, the analog}^ grows striking when 
we recall that analysis deduces the uncon- 
scious, the censorship, sublimation, in a word, 
the " autonomous " factors of the mental 
life of the individual, from the influence of 
society. Significant is the way in which psy- 
choanalysis develops the views of Pierre Janet, 
which are so closely akin to those of the 
psychoanalysts. Janet, too, declares that psy- 
chical disturbances are determined by a re- 
duction of adaptation to the environment, of 
psychical tension, of the " reality function " ; 
he, likewise, concerns himself with an abnormal 
restriction of consciousness. Psychoanalysis 
provides a social content for the " outer 
world," that to which the individual has to 
adapt himself. The psychological formalism 
of Janet (a doctrine whose importance must 
on no account be underestimated), and the 
epoch-making sociological formalism of Durk- 
heim, are both furnished by psychoanalysis 
with a significant content. 

All these doctrines build on the same prin- 



48 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

ciple. They build upon the principle which is 
used by Durkheim with such logical consis- 
tency and generality, upon the principle that 
the non-physical demands of society become, 
in the individual, factors divorced from im- 
mediacy. 1 Psychoanalysis does especially good 
service here, for it breaks the vicious circle 
of priority or conditionality, which has led 
to so many vain verbal disputes. It effects 
a fruitful application of the principle that 
society exercises a formative influence upon 
the individual, while remaining an essentially 
individuo-psy etiological discipline. Obviously 
this likewise involves certain shortcomings, 
but such is the fate of every bold movement. 
In all healthy division of labour there must 
be a supreme grouping of individual data 
which renders inevitable inadequacies harm- 
less. 

One of the first and most important ac- 
quisitions of our new branch of science was 
the way in which it paid due attention to 
unconscious mental phenomena. It has done 
this systematically and uncompromisingly, 
never at haphazard. The idea of the uncon- 
scious had obtained the freedom of the city 
in the literary world before the days of psy- 

1 " The inhibitions are taken up into the mind," Silberer, 
op. cit., p. 171. 



SOCIAL ORGANISATION 49 

choanalysis, but it had remained the sport of 
occultist triflers and intellectualist chatterers, 
with the aid of a few minor metaphysical 
developments. This unscientific and super- 
ficial aspect of the theory was cleared out 
of the way by psychoanalysis. With the 
aid of this method we have achieved a real 
knowledge of the unconscious, and have also 
secured a conception, no less essential though 
not yet sufficiently precise, of the forecon- 
scious. In the realm of the foreconscious 
are such elements of the unconscious psyche 
as are no more than temporarily in the un- 
conscious ; such as frequently or regularly 
cross the threshold of consciousness ; such as 
are obliterated from consciousness, not on 
account of the nature of their thought content, 
but for accidental and temporary reasons. 
Those elements, on the other hand, which 
have been permanently forgotten, or which 
have never entered the conscious mind, those 
elements which cannot cross the threshold 
of consciousness, constitute the unconscious. 
No matter that there is a less sharply defined 
boundary between the foreconscious and the 
unconscious, than there is between the con- 
scious and all that temporarily or permanently 
lies beyond the threshold. In such classifi- 
cations, the decisive consideration is not the 

4 



50 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

extent of the cleavage but the criterion of 
differentiation. 

Psychoanalysis regards the existence of the 
foreconscious as self-evident, and concentrates 
its attention on the unconscious. Primarily 
this is because the psychology of the uncon- 
scious is closely associated with the neuroses. 
This is not the only reason. Let us consider 
the social bearing of these conceptions. What 
have we to understand by the statement 
that one of my psychical processes is con- 
scious ? To put the matter crudely, this means 
nothing else than that I can express it in 
words, that by means of speech I can com- 
municate it to others in a way they will be 
able to understand. Whatever physiological 
factors and accompaniments consciousness may 
possess, direct psychological analysis can attach 
itself only to the factor of the intelligible. I 
do not relate everything that I think, but the 
starting-point of any thought process cannot 
but be my capacity to relate it should I so 
desire. For the present we make no attempt 
to discuss the significance of such a desire. 
Beyond question, it is not the same thing to 
be able to do something and to desire to 
do it. We can take our stand upon this 
difference. The conscious is what we are 
able to communicate to others, what we are 



SOCIAL ORGANISATION 51 

able to disclose to society ; it is what can be 
adequately incorporated in speech, that is to 
say, in a system of extant social conven- 
tions. 1 

The difference between the conscious and 
the foreconscious is inconsiderable. It is the 
difference between actuality and potentiality ; 
a difference which does not concern the struc- 
ture of the mind, but depends solely upon the 
momentary state of circumstances and the 
individual. In so far as the foreconscious 
occupies different relationships from those 
occupied by the conscious, the difference 
concerns only the formless situation and 
not the essentially operative structure of 
society. 

Very different is it with the unconscious. 
Here the decisive matter is, not that the 
unconscious cannot come to play a salient 
part in the psyche (for this assertion is only 
true within limits), but that the unconscious 
cannot present itself before society. What- 
ever disturbances or excitations the uncon- 
scious may produce within me, I have no 
power to give even approximate expression 
to the workings of my unconscious, or to 

1 It is possible that to think of anything, necessarily involves 
the incipient, rudimentary, unnoted utterance of the relevant 
words. 



52 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

recount these workings to other persons. Psy- 
choanalysts formulate this by saying that 
the unconscious is nonsocial. This must not 
be interpreted as implying an individuality of 
the unconscious, as implying that the un- 
conscious is peculiarly differentiated in different 
persons ; such an assertion would apply less 
correctly to the unconscious than to the 
conscious. What has to be understood is 
that the unconscious, even if it be identical 
in a number of persons, never manifests itself 
among them. The unconscious may play an 
important part as indicating a community 
of common ancestry, but it does not dis- 
close itself in the working life of the com- 
munity. 

Investigation shows that this contrast really 
exists, that the various unconsciouses do, in 
fact, resemble one another closely, just as 
there is a striking resemblance between the 
above-described individual and mass mani- 
festations of the unconscious. The contrast is 
already known to us ; we discern in it the 
contrast between the species and society. If 
we may venture on a bolder simplification, we 
shall infer that the unconscious, while posses- 
sing the characteristics of the species, is non- 
social — and at the same time, of course, 
nonindividual. 



SOCIAL ORGANISATION 53 

Before we pass from nonsociality to a 
possible antisociality, we have to consider 
psychoanalysis proper, to consider its aim of 
rendering the unconscious conscious. The 
purpose of psychoanalysis is to throw light on 
the unconscious elements of the psyche, to 
place them at the disposal of the conscious. 
The means whereby we do this is the dis- 
placement from its normal surroundings of 
that which we have to analyse, and the in- 
terpretation of the isolated and masked mani- 
festations of the unconscious by comparing 
and systematising these. The characteristic 
view that psychoanalysis signifies a favouring 
of the unconscious, signifies its enfranchise- 
ment into the realm of action, is utterly false. 
The analyst aims merely at rendering it 
possible to recognise the unconscious, at making 
it accessible to society, and in especial to the 
physician and to the conscious ego. I must 
point out that in many cases that which is 
unconscious is not an individual idea, but 
the relationship between conscious (or fore- 
conscious) ideas. As a rule, however, it is 
this very matter of a relationship which puts 
the analyst on the track of the hidden psychical 
contents. In any case, this may serve to 
make the reader understand that we do not 
look upon the unconscious as a substantial 



54 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

entity, as if it were the one and only reality. 1 
The unconscious represents merely a transition 
to that form of reality which is not the reality 
of the consciousness, of the categories, but is 
equivalent to the reality of the raw material. 
There appears in the unconscious, as raw 
material, everything which in the conscious 
was an organic, formal, grammatical con- 
struction. 2 The unconscious works only with 
the coexistent ; the relationship of the al- 
ternative, of the contrast, is unknown to it. 
In association therewith, the unconscious has 
the quality of mobility (forming associations 
in freedom from outward determination) ; and 
the quality of timelessness, in that it neglects 
the circumstances of the outer world. 3 All 
this agrees admirably with the theories ex- 
pounded by Durkheim. The unconscious is 
nonsocial. Psychoanalysis aims at replacing 
it by a social equivalent. Of course this does 
not mean solely an approximation of the 
unconscious to society, but the converse as 
well. Not only, however, does the un- 

1 Cf. P. Bjerre, Bewusstsein kontra Unterbewusstsein, 
Jahrbuch fur Psychoanalyse, V, p. 697. 

3 Concerning the latent content of dreams, cf. Freud, 
Die Traumdeutung, 4th edition, Vienna and Leipzig, 
191 6, p. 247. — The Interpretation of Dreams, Allen and 
Unwin, London, 1913, p. 260. 

3 Freud, Das Unbewusste, Neurosenlehre, IV, p. 319. 



SOCIAL ORGANISATION 55 

conscious protest against this ; but in society, 
likewise, we discern a strong tendency to 
resistance, despite the fact that the analytic 
trend, as we shall learn more fully in the 
sequel, is predominantly social. For the 
moment, let it suffice to say that this antagon- 
ism between the unconscious and society would 
seem to be of no merely static character, but 
presumably to possess a dynamic and militant 
quality. 

The content of the unconscious consists, in 
fact, of wishes the realisation of which, and 
even the expression of which, is forbidden by 
society. The study of mass ideas and of the 
beginnings of civilisation has familiarised us 
with these wishes. They are forbidden forms 
of sexuality and of allied trends which are 
regarded with disapproval. In respect of the 
repression of these complexes, in respect of 
the way in which they are rendered uncon- 
scious, modern man and the totemist resemble 
one another far more closely than in respect 
of other branches of their lives. This persis- 
tence is a grave problem. No less grave is the 
problem, what really causes repression ; why 
not only the realisation of the wishes, but also 
their expression, and even their very entry 
into consciousness, are forbidden ; and why 
this process is effected so forcibly that the 



56 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

relevant complexes are utterly unable to find 
vent in speech. I shall make no attempt to 
answer these questions definitively, since my 
aim is merely one of interpretation. All I 
wish is to arrange the problems in order of 
importance. 

Let me insist, above all, that there exists 
in addition to repression an opposite way of 
checking forbidden actions. I refer to self- 
critical judgment, which bears the same sort 
of relationship to repression that repression 
bears to physical flight from an alarming or 
loathsome object. 1 It is necessary to draw 
attention to this conscious, critical judgment, 
as the other pole within the psychical sphere. 
Rational reflection finds nothing strange in 
self-critical judgment ; but repression, being 
a manifestly illogical attitude, seems incom- 
prehensible. Nevertheless, it does not follow 
that repression is more complicated than 
self -critical judgment, any more than that 
the dream is more complicated than waking 
thought. 

Let us dismiss the problem of the persistence 
of the " nuclear complexes/' and turn to 
that of repression. What is the link between 
the realisation of the wishes and their ex- 
pression, the link which psychoanalysis brings 

1 Freud, Die Verdrangung, Neurosenlehre, IV, p. 279. 



SOCIAL ORGANISATION 57 

so prominently before us ? Unquestionably 
it is that the expression of the wish keeps it 
permanently on the agenda, and thus prevents 
its defeat, which has to be effected once and 
for all. But this is not the whole matter. 
The unconscious wish is felt, but its influence 
does not extend beyond the limits of the 
individual. It does not establish any barriers 
between human beings. We know, indeed, 
that persons can collaborate even when they 
have sharp differences upon matters of feeling 
and upon matters of opinion. But this can 
only take place in a comparatively evolved 
community ; it is impossible in primitive 
communities, where cooperation is rigid, 
mechanical, and based upon homogeneity. 
Among primitive men, cooperation is physi- 
cally enforced, or is enforced in a quasi 
physical manner, with a uniformity of im- 
pulsive rhythm which resembles the physical. 
In the earlier stages of human life, impulse is 
still very close to action, and solidarity cannot 
tolerate any hostile acts that stand so close 
to realisation. The expression of antisocial 
wishes would imply anarchy and atomisation ; 
the social organisation is inelastic ; solidarity, 
therefore, represses any such expression. The 
assumption lies ready to hand that in the 
primitive type of solidarity it was found 



58 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

essential to forbid the mere mention of such 
a wish, and to forbid no less the mere thinking 
about it. Its public discussion would involve 
the expression of opposing views. Where the 
inhibition must be unconditional and general, 
where it must be entirely uncontradicted, the 
inhibited wish must be left wholly undis- 
cussed. For either it would be a cause of 
disturbance, and is therefore repressed, or else, 
being entirely superfluous, it cannot even be 
formulated. Nor can we suppose that that of 
which it is forbidden to speak can remain 
permanently in the consciousness. Mechanical 
solidarity and the dominion of collective ideas 
impose uniformity even in the realm of con- 
sciousness, upon the very surface of social 
contact. Moreover, we are concerned with 
things which have no place in everyday life, 
with things, any mention of which would 
break up the mass unity. 

Durkheim contends that the chief charac- 
teristic of primitive solidarity was that the 
prevailing law of primitive society was a 
penal law (droit repressif). Repression, too, 
has as its essence a forcible breaking-in of the 
individual to fit him for the service of the 
community. In the case of offences against 
property, punishment came into play ; in the 
case of sexual offences, repression was at work. 



SOCIAL ORGANISATION 59 

The system is the same — quasi-physical, rigid, 
and uniform. 

If we recall that repression is not the most 
primitive condition of all, but the one which 
follows upon the condition in which impulses 
were dominant, we shall realise that repression, 
genetically regarded, stands between unre- 
straint and self-critical judgment, and that 
in certain respects it has closer affinities 
with unrestraint. Repression, in fact, is far 
from being a final settlement of antisocial 
wishes. It merely carries them forward to 
account, without destroying them, as psycho- 
analysis has shown on innumerable occasions. 
Freud writes that the repressed material con- 
tinues to thrive in the darkness. 1 He says 
also : " No one can be slain in absentia or 
in effigie." % The inadequacy of repression is, 
as Durkheim notes, precisely analogous to 
the fragility of mechanical solidarity. Under 
certain conditions, we can see in both the 
fulfilment of the poet's words : 

Majestic doom, interwoven with creation, 
That he who strives for power shall by power be destroyed. 
Rulers, in the end, must bow their necks beneath the yoke, 
And he to-day is lord who yesterday was rebel. 3 



1 Freud, loc. cit. 

a Zur Dynamik der Uebertragung, Zentralblatt fur Psycho- 
logie, anno II, p. 481. 

a F. Werfel, Spruch eines gesturrten Saturnus. 



60 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOCxY 

But the term analogy is by no means 
apposite, seeing that repression, and a mechani- 
cal solidarity which is dominant in virtue 
of the mass idea, are respectively individual 
and social formulas of the same institution. 

The most highly developed form of the 
overcoming of antisocial wishes is self-critical 
judgment, the critical rejection of and the 
refusal to satisfy an impulse. This is com- 
patible with discussion, and is indeed con- 
ditioned by discussion. Self-critical judgment 
presupposes the consciousness that the wish 
actually exists, and that its control demands 
a certain trouble. In so far as the wish 
gradually declines and disappears, its ex- 
pression becomes purposeless ; but it may 
of course persist as a topic of discussion. 

The system of self-critical judgment belongs 
to a social structure entirely different from 
that to which the system of repression belongs. 
The system of society based upon self-critical 
judgment is elastic ; incipient onslaughts are 
not able to threaten its stability. Its cohesion 
cannot be ascribed to any coercive mass 
ideas, inasmuch as all self-criticism is in 
reality social criticism which destroys homo- 
geneity. The social contrast to self-critical 
judgment is dogma ; its social correlate is 
conviction. I must refer, in especial, to S. 



SOCIAL ORGANISATION 61 

Ferenczi's psychoanalytical publications. 1 He 
gives the name of conquest to the success of 
authority and of the moralisation that is 
based on authority ; and he gives the name 
of conviction to the governance that is based 
upon the making of things accessible. 3 Con- 
viction is a fact of such a nature that it 
stands equally remote from authority and 
from nihilism — not half way between them. 
Incontestably, unfaith or scepticism often in- 
trudes between faith and conviction, but this 
must not be confused with the development 
of faith into conviction. Whereas the social 
expression of scepticism is anarchy, the social 
expression of conviction is the union of free 
individuals. This brings us back to Durk- 
heim's conception, for Durkheim holds that 
evolution tends towards organic solidarity. 
Such a solidarity conditions a legal structure 
wherein contractual law (droit restitutif) pre- 
vails, a system based on the division of labour. 
Now division of labour implies the existence 
of diverse individuals, for whom the bond of 
union is not a mass rhythm but the association 
of their various working functions. In these 

* The Progress of Psychoanalysis [Magyar], Budapest, 
1920, pp. 22, et seq. 

» In Magyar, as well as in English and in the Latin tongues, 
the word " conviction " is formed from the same root as 
" victory." 



62 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

circumstances there cannot, of course, be 
any dominant dogma, any conquest and 
repression ; but there can be free discussion, 
conviction, and the reasoned condemnation 
of antisocial tendencies. It is, however, 
necessary to reiterate that this can be fully 
achieved only in the ideal perfection of organic 
solidarity. 

No detailed proof need be offered of the 
assertion that self-critical judgment, when it 
can be achieved, is more effective than re- 
pression. Repression has no annihilating force 
whatever, whereas self-critical judgment seeks 
out every particle of the condemned material, 
endeavouring to detach it from its connexions. 
Self-critical judgment does not leave the un- 
conscious intact as a solid block, and it is 
therefore able to avail itself of the methods 
of dissociation and canalisation for the purpose 
of rendering the unconscious harmless. Psy- 
choanalytical methods of treatment give a 
practical demonstration of this. Repression, 
in so far as it has not been completely suc- 
cessful, leads to the thriving of certain con- 
structions wherein the repressed complex still 
manifests itself as a unified entity ; but nothing 
of this kind ensues upon self-critical judgment. 
Moerover, self-critical judgment is not subject 
to any liaison with the complex, such as 



SOCIAL ORGANISATION 63 

often gives a quaint colouring to repression, 
as we are apt to see in the neuroses. The 
totemistic organisation founded upon incest 
and parricide is, qua content, permeated with 
incest and parricide. Release from these 
trends begins only at a later stage of develop- 
ment, in the course of which differentiation 
and criticism, however slowly, secure breathing 
space. 

Self-critical judgment, far from concealing 
a consecration of the unconscious, is verily 
the liberation of the individuality from the 
thraldom of the unconscious. In repression, 
not only the repressed material, but likewise 
and necessarily the process of repression, be- 
come unconscious. Deliberate attempts at 
repression have practically no significance, or 
at most are significant as temporary deflec- 
tions. The authority which is at work on 
the borderline between the unconscious and 
the foreconscious, by psychoanalysts termed 
the censor, is itself unconscious. We may 
compare it with the press censorship, as the 
important organ of a social dictatorship ; the 
actual working of this press censorship is 
concealed from men's eyes, although its ex- 
istence makes itself felt. As a rule and for 
organic reasons the press censorship is ar- 
bitrary, pursues its own ends, and serves 



64 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

partisan aims. The same may be said of the 
endopsychic censor, for this protects the con- 
scious against the unconscious, without helping 
the conscious to a victory over the uncon- 
scious. For the censor is in great part a 
denial of the conscious, a denial of the social 
interchange of ideas. 

As ultimate outcome we find that psycho- 
analysis contributes to the theory of mechani- 
cal solidarity and to the theory of organic 
solidarity something more than a mere supply 
of psychical contents. The schemata of re- 
pression and self-critical judgment, of faith, 
unfaith, and conviction, the discovery of the 
unconscious, have thrown a new and clearer 
light on the relationship of the individual to 
the social organism. We must now consider 
certain important details. 

Psychoanalysis has drawn its main materials 
from the study of the slighter and purely 
functional mental disorders, from the study 
of psychoneuroses. The background of these 
disorders is formed by sexual wishes of an 
antisocial character. These have been re- 
pressed, but have not been destroyed. On the 
contrary, they have become intensified ; and 
concomitantly with this intensification there 
has occurred an accentuation of repression. 
The repressed trends break out in various 



SOCIAL ORGANISATION 65 

groups of symptoms, some of which are 
physical, though to a predominant extent 
they are mental. These syndromes and com- 
promise formations, although they are far 
from being tantamount to the conquest of 
power by the repressed wishes, greatly reduce 
the social value of the patient. The repressed 
trends achieve this much, that the subject 
neglects or abandons social relationships. 
Furthermore, the repressed trends secure par- 
tial satisfaction along various underground 
channels. Anxiety is to be regarded as a 
substitute for repressed sexual libido, the 
anxiety being in part a direct expression of 
the libido energy, but in part the expression 
of dread of the punishments inflicted by society. 
Here, then, we encounter a regression to re- 
pression, a regression to mechanical solidarity, 
at a stage of evolution wherein organic soli- 
darity and self-critical judgment should prevail. 
At the same time, however, this regression is 
a relapse into the gratification of the con- 
demned libido, which secures fulfilment un- 
changed in its essence, though mutilated and 
caricatured in point of form. Psychoanalysts 
speak of these disguises as idealisation, in 
contradistinction to sublimation, in which 
there occurs an integral transference of the 
impulsive energies into useful activities. 

5 



66 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

Idealisation is characterised by the morpho- 
logical covering up of the repressed material, 
with which it is therefore congruent ; x whereas 
sublimation involves a thoroughgoing elabora- 
tion of the repressed material. The hysterical 
paroxysm is invariably the mask for an act 
of coitus. In the compulsion neuroses we 
often encounter the extreme case, in which 
the patient imperturbably carries out some 
perverse practice, while to satisfy his con- 
science he rigidly abstains from some associated 
or analogous but harmless and insignificant 
form of activity, turning the matter off as 
it were with a jest. A part of every neurosis 
is the clinging to it, the " will to disease/' 
the " flight towards disease/' There is a 
lapse from the level of society to a lower 
level which is nearer to the level of the species. 
The essence of the lesser or functional psy- 
choses is the turning away from society, 
the exclusive concentration upon the ego, in 
conjunction with the defence of the uncon- 
scious, or even capitulation to the unconscious. 
Of course this turning away from society 
must not be described as a form of individual- 
ism, which might well transcend the normal 
life in value. The approximation takes place, 

1 " The neurosis is the negative of the perversion," Freud, 
Sexualtheorie, 3rd edition, Leipzig and Vienna, 1915, p. 30. 



SOCIAL ORGANISATION 67 

not to the individuality, but to the system of 
a more primitive society. This is shown, 
among other indications, by the compulsive 
character which " despite the best intentions 
in the world " is manifest in every neurosis. 
It is somewhat less strikingly present in 
hysteria, where the symptoms are predomi- 
nantly physical. But the other great psycho- 
neurosis is preeminently termed the com- 
pulsion neurosis. Now there are only two 
kinds of compulsion : the compulsion exercised 
by our impulses ; and the compulsion exer- 
cised by a more primitive social environment. 
Neurotic compulsion contains both forms in 
varying degrees of intensity, according to the 
adaptation to extant society,— an adaptation 
which does not require compulsion in the 
narrower sense of the term. 

The content of the neuroses is in conformity 
with these considerations. The points of con- 
tact between the individual and the species, 
and between society and the species —sexuality 
and childhood — are here made manifest. Let 
us first consider childhood, which is more 
directly interconnected with society. 

The mental characteristics of the child are 
of supreme importance both sociologically and 
psychologically. In theory this has often been 
recognised ; but psychoanalysis has made of 



68 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

the theory a working hypothesis, and has 
boldly attempted to fill in its outlines. The 
child's environment, that which at first in 
the majority of instances constitutes for the 
child the phenomenal form of society, consists 
mainly of the parents. Thus the central 
problem is the relationship of the child to 
the parents. In my account of the matter, 
I shall speak of male children only, first of 
all because the available data relate chiefly 
to boys and because their development is 
unquestionably more important ; and secondly 
because, as far as the broad lineaments are 
concerned, what applies to boys applies to 
girls, mutatis mutandis, and allowing for the 
differences of sex. 

Primarily the relationship of the son to the 
mother is not social, but specifically physio- 
logical (birth). The normally apparent incest 
trend signifies, in part at least, the revival of 
this relationship, as is proved by the frequent 
occurrence of birth fantasies. The trend is 
certainly antisocial, antievolutional. In nor- 
mal life, however, it does not undergo any 
independent development ; it is sublimated, 
to constitute a source of energy in the later 
sexual life, and in the general life. This 
process of sublimation is apt to be arrested 
by an excess of maternal tenderness, which 



SOCIAL ORGANISATION 69 

leads to a fixation of the incest trend, and 
renders inevitable a conflict between that 
trend and the accentuated repression. Such 
fixation actually exists in most cases, a pheno- 
menon which is unquestionably one of the 
causes of the slowness of our evolution and 
of the irrationality of our behaviour, especially 
in sexual matters. 

As we already know, the father represents 
the inhibitions and commands of society. 
Nowadays this identification of the father 
with society has already become weaker. 
Whereas society has travelled a long way 
in the development towards free cooperation, 
the actual father is still but imperfectly dis- 
tinguished from the father who was honoured 
in the form of the totem-animal. The cause 
of this discrepancy is to be found, not only 
in the child, not only in the child's eternal 
primitiveness, but also in the regressive ten- 
dencies of the adult, which he is of course 
able to work off upon the child. The idea 
of absolute monarchy loses credit notably, 
when compared with the idea of absolutism 
in education ; but we may rest assured that 
the relative persistence of the latter helps to 
retard political progress. Ferenczi warns the 
socialist leaders that their actions will be 
paralysed as long as they continue as fathers 



70 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

to demand for themselves blind respect and 
servile subjection. 1 Mensendieck likewise cen- 
sures the irrational behaviour of parents in 
the domain of permissions and prohibitions, 
their chief social functions. 2 The relationship 
to the parents constitutes the very kernel of 
the neuroses. I cannot refrain from sum- 
marising the account of this matter given by 
an intelligent youth suffering from compulsion 
neurosis, for his record has scientific value 
apart from the immediate psychological interest 
of the particular case. 3 

No special qualifications, he writes, are 
requisite for the practice of the parental 
profession. The parents bring a child into 
the world irresponsibly, as an act of special 
creation. The child is a plaything, which 
comes into existence without the exercise of 
its own will, and which is supposed to be 
grateful for the boon forced upon it. Parent- 
worship, he adds, is the root of the similar 



J Ferenczi, Nervous Symptoms, etc. [Psychoanalytical 
Essays, in Magyar], Budapest, 191 4, p. 24. — In any case, 
Marxist, socialism is not incompatible with authoritarian 
dogmatism. 

3 Zur Technik des Unterrichts und der Erziehung wahrend 
der psychoanalytischen Behandlung, Jahrbuch fur Psycho- 
analyse, V, p. 460. 

3 Riklirj, Aus der Analyse einer Zwangsneurose, Jahrbuch 
fur Psychoanalyse, II, pp. 291, et seq. 



SOCIAL ORGANISATION 71 

tendencies manifest in social life, the root of 
monarchism and militarism. 

The relationship of mutual irresponsibility, 
whose ethics cannot here be discussed, neces- 
sarily produces effects both upon the individual 
and upon society, for the relationship to the 
parent has an archetypal character. 1 Psycho- 
analysis has shown us that hypnosis is a copy 
of lulling by the mother or of intimidation by 
the father. We are readily reminded of loyalty, 
demagogy, and kindred social manifestations. 

Psychoanalysis has further demonstrated the 
determinative influence of other factors opera- 
tive during childhood, and notably that of 
sexual traumata. Subsequently Freud was 
inclined to believe that the basis of the future 
constitution was formed, not so much by 
gross sexual traumata, as by the whole course 
of the sexual life during childhood. This view, 
far from underestimating the importance of 
environment and education, is one which 
takes every environmental and educational 
element into account. The noxious influences 
which have no connexion with the parents 
may be ranged in two classes : (i) Premature 
and immoderate awakening of sensuality, with 
consequent fixation ; (2) Intensified repression, 

1 Concerning the irresponsibility of children, cf. Mensen 
dieck, op. cit., p. 457. 



72 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

in association with despotic behaviour towards 
the child. 

We must now sketch the sociological results 
of psychosexualanalysis ; all the threads seem 
to converge upon this point. This is a diffi- 
cult field of study, and we cannot as yet boast 
very exact knowledge of the subject. Indu- 
bitably we have to seek in sexuality the 
essence of that which we have termed 
" species/' that which both the individual and 
society have produced out of themselves, 
but which is at the same time a continuous 
drag upon progress. While it is true that, as 
the material of sublimation, it constitutes a 
main factor of evolution and of the great 
creations, structurally nevertheless, as impulse 
and as tissue of partial impulses, it is the 
antagonist of progress. 1 Let us reconsider in 
a single survey a few of the traits of this 
" species." 

It is characteristic. of sexuality that in this 
domain there is a closer approximation be- 
tween thought and action than elsewhere. 
In the field of sex there seems to occur what 
we may term a short circuit between body 
and mind.* From this source may well arise 

1 Cf. Silberer, op. cit., Introversion and Regeneration 
[Reincarnation or Rebirth]. 

a Concerning the specific role of the sexual organs when 



SOCIAL ORGANISATION 73 

the belief in the omnipotence of thought 
which is so widely diffused at a primitive 
stage, the belief which is fundamental both 
in magic and in compulsion neurosis. In a 
wider sense, associated therewith is every 
irrational overvaluation, first of all of the 
own ego (narcissism — which may have an 
interesting function in war 1 ), and secondly of 
the external sexual object (love). We now 
have a clue to the reason why in so many 
fields the restriction and regulation of sexuality 
are still effected by repression and not by 
self-critical judgment. We have been glad 
to accept the idea that we must educate 
children in a scientific, secular morality ; but 
we are still far from realising that it would 
be well to enlighten the child sexually, and 
not to postpone this enlightenment with the 
utmost caution and for the greatest possible 
period. For here word and deed are in closest 
association ; here the foundation for self- 
critical judgment is of the slightest. On the 
other hand, from the omnipotence of thought 
and from the energising value of knowledge 

in a state of excitement, cf . Freud, Zur Einfuhrung des 
Narzissmus, Jahrbuch, VI, p. 9 ; Ueber Sexualitat und 
Zwang, ibid., p. 13. 

1 He who cannot believe in his own death becomes a hero. 
Freud, Ueber Krieg und Tod, p. 519. — The species, the germ 
plasm, is in fact immortal ! 



74 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

of sexual things, there is derivable one of 
the most powerful motive forces of science and 
research. 1 Science, however, corresponds to 
the stage of self-critical judgment and of the 
evolved division of labour. 

Another salient characteristic of sexuality 
is the frequency of perversion. In connexion 
with the sexual impulse, which appears in 
so many forms without notable transformation, 
there frequently occurs the rigid fixation of 
a single component or of a group of components. 
The primary source of the phenomenon of 
perversion is almost always to be found in 
the earlier years of childhood. Its origin is 
associated with the fact that during childhood 
the sexual impulse is present, although sexual 
functions properly speaking are completely 
lacking. It is not unlikely that wholesale 
sexual repression may have intensified the 
antisocial or dangerous features of the per- 
versions. From our. point of view, special 
attention must be paid to a polar couple of 
perversions. I refer to the form of sadism and 
masochism which is not algolagniac, but signi- 
fies the voluptuousness of domination and of 
subjection thereto. We must also take into 
account the preponderant role of homosexual 
tendencies, a role which has been disclosed by 

1 Cf. Freud, Totem und Tabu, p. 81. 



SOCIAL ORGANISATION 75 

psychoanalysis. We are, then, in a position 
to emphasise the probable significance of sadism 
and masochism in the social organism. Es- 
pecially in this connexion, we think of the 
church and of army life. The repression of 
these trends, and above all of sadism, likewise 
has important bearings. 

A consideration of the whole question shows 
that the tenacious persistence of the system 
of repression in the regulation of sexuality 
affords evidence of the tenacity of the sexual 
life itself and of the way in which sexual 
evolution lags behind the general progress of 
civilisation. Psychoanalysis has made us 
familiar with the ideas of " psychosexual 
parallelism/ ' of " sexual typicalness " — the con- 
ception according to which sexuality consti- 
tutes at least one of the prime sources of the 
mind and part of its skeletal framework. 
The problems thus thrust on our attention 
naturally lead into the domain of a necessarily 
general formal psychology, and into the 
domain of biology. The achievements of psy- 
choanalysis up to the present date are valuable 
to this extent at any rate. They offer an 
interesting counterpart to the economico- 
materialistic mysticism of^ Marxist doctrine, 
and are less one-sided than this. Yet more 
important is the light psychoanalysis has 



76 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

thrown upon the problem of social organisa- 
tion, the demonstration of the evolutional 
disharmony of society. Psychoanalysis alone 
has rendered possible a systematic study of 
the attitude of society towards sexuality. 
Freud describes that attitude as a mixture of 
lasciviousness and prudery. 1 The need for 
psychoanalysis receives additional justification 
(though we can hardly congratulate ourselves 
upon this matter) precisely from the attacks 
made upon the new method. Its opponents, 
renouncing all attempts at serious scientific 
criticism, would fain suppress it as anti- 
moral. A sexual ethic that stands above 
and outside the system of repressions is 
still almost incomprehensible to the public 
mind. 

But the reader must not suppose that sexual 
repression stands as a sort of isolated rock 
in the sea of critical thought. This would 
not be true even if we were to contemplate 
only the state of affairs before 1914 (a limita- 
tion which would, unfortunately, be quite 
without warrant). There can be no question 
that sexual morality is closely connected with 
the social order, even though the former 
may not depend upon the latter quite so 

1 Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, I, 191 1, 
p. 212. 



SOCIAL ORGANISATION 77 

absolutely as certain simple-minded revolu- 
tionists imagine. This system of ideas has 
secured notable support from the observation 
of Ernest Jones, that in the middle ages 
sexual repression was based upon compen- 
satory delusions, but at a later date was 
based upon hypocritical puritanism. 1 The 
author cannot mean to imply that any absolute 
increase of repression occurred during the 
later period, for there can be no question 
that the manifestations of sexuality became 
freer subsequent to the middle ages. The so- 
called " old liberalism " in like manner displays 
a freer spirit than clericalism, but is none the 
less characterised by an ostrich policy towards 
the discussion of certain problems, and, above 
all, of religious problems. I cannot follow up 
this thought, and my only reason for referring 
to the matter has been to show that evolution 
never makes equal progress in all fields, and 
that the study of isolated topics is indis- 
pensable. 

Let us now turn to the social aims of psy- 
choanalysis. We know that the essential 
object of analytic therapy is to lift to the 
level of self-critical judgment the patients 
who have remained fixed in the stage of re- 
pression. Corresponding therewith in the 

1 Jones, op. cit., p. 139. 



78 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

social field we have the acceleration of evolu- 
tion a la Durkheim towards social solidarity. 
This acceleration does not involve any blind 
affirmation of a dogmatically conceived process, 
like that contemplated by Marxist socialism, 
but leaves room for courageous and purposive 
effort to counteract enduring trends. More- 
over, every detail, the most important details 
not excepted, is the concern of politics, and 
has nothing to do with psychoanalysis. For 
psychoanalysis can hardly have a message to 
convey upon land reform or the other pro- 
posals of any political party. Only the 
fundamental aim of evolution, the spirit, the 
atmosphere, can serve as a link between psy- 
choanalysis and politics. But as far as this 
fundamental aim is concerned, it is positively 
essential that they should join hands. In 
addition, there are of course, many concrete 
points of contact. 

Analytical treatment aims at influencing 
the patient so that he may on the one hand 
recognise every possibility, antisocial possi- 
bilities not excepted, and may on the other 
hand comprehend what is socially necessary. 
A purely static and intellectualist disclosure 
of the pathogenic material is just as futile as 
are superficial persuasion and sermonising. 
In psychoanalysis, conviction means that the 



SOCIAL ORGANISATION 79 

patient must convince himself. No one can 
give salvation to another. We can only place 
in another's hands the means wherewith he 
can work out his own salvation. Psycho- 
analysis wishes to train human beings who 
shall be free and individually different, but 
who shall unremittingly advance towards co- 
operation ; human beings united by organic 
solidarity. To the economic basis of this 
society, to the division of labour upon which 
Durkheim lays so much stress, psychoanalysis 
adds the pertinent psychological foundation — 
critical thought that is free both outwardly 
and inwardly. The other favourite idea of 
Durkheim, that of contractual solidarity, is 
the idea of unification, of conviction. It is 
obvious that analytical treatment, within its 
limits, contributes towards this end, for the 
psychoneuroses are likewise social phenomena. 
Furthermore, psychoanalysis springs in ad- 
dition from regions quite distinct from path- 
ology. The literature of the subject, and 
especially the analytical books written by 
non-medical authors, afford proof of the wide 
radiations of the work. The analytical psy- 
chology of religion has a spirit perfectly 
identical with that of Durkheim ; using other 
weapons, it reinforces the same novel trend 
of freethought. In place of the contemptuous 



80 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

neglect of religion and in place of tasteless 
mockery of religion (both of these are mani- 
festations of repression), we have explanations 
of the function of religion. The acquisitions 
of psychoanalysis in the field of sexual morality, 
those which support the demand for deliberate 
regulation and sublimation, will help to free 
us once for all from the hopeless alternatives 
of hypocrisy or libertinism. Now this advance 
cannot fail to react upon the whole system of 
social organisation. 

In the educational field, the aim of psycho- 
analysis is to put an end to the present con- 
dition of affairs, wherein the upbringing of 
the child takes the form of establishing in- 
hibitions of which the young man has to rid 
himself with great difficulty in order that he 
may enter into the comparatively free life 
of society, inhibitions that interpose obstacles 
against the further emancipation of this society. 
Psychoanalysts wish to awaken parents to a 
sense of responsibility, to make parents realise 
how immoral it is to give vent to their own 
impulses in their relations to their children, 
to induce elders utterly to abandon the 
policy of " ask no questions/' l The aim of 
psychoanalysis is to put an end to the 

1 K. Abraham, Ueber Schaulust, etc., Jahrbuch, VI, 
P- 73- 



SOCIAL ORGANISATION 81 

fixation of birth, the archetype of human 
weakness, to put an end to dependence and 
irresponsibility. Psychoanalysts desire to free 
the individual and society from the yoke of 
the species. 

I believe that I am correct in thus inter- 
preting the clear indication of Ferenczi that 
psychoanalysis desires an individualist-socialist 
society. 1 This would not be a mingling of 
unbridled anarchism and despotic communism, 
but the very opposite. It would be a union 
of libertarian individualism and regulative 
collectivism, of self-government and control. 
It would be the community of the division 
of labour ; of the highest possible economic 
and spiritual development ; of concord, justice, 
and individuality. 

We must reject all combinations of terror 
and anarchy. Utterly false would it be to 
maintain that psychoanalysis, which is indeed 
revolutionary, approves every possible revo- 
lution for its own sake. Psychoanalysts are 
aware that the rebellion against paternal 
authority which is the root of social reform/ 
invariably contains elements of justice and 
rationality ; they are aware that it can never 
be superfluous : 

1 Nervose Symptome, etc., p. 24. 
a Cf. Rank, op. cit., p. 391. 
6 



82 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

And even though the world, resolving other conflicts, should 

grow beautiful, 
There will persist the conflict between fathers and sons. 1 

But to psychoanalysis, the creator of " self- 
critical judgment/' this revolt cannot be an 
end in itself. Psychoanalysts do not offer 
up moral aims as a sacrifice to a mere desire 
for change ; the revolution they hope for is 
not an overthrow but an ascent. Equally 
foreign, therefore, to the spirit of psychoanaly- 
sis are red ruin and black reaction. No less 
remote from that spirit, likewise, is of course 
formal bourgeois democracy. The place of 
psychoanalysis in the struggle of the great 
powers is by the side of " liberal socialism/ ' 

In these matters weighty issues hang upon 
the future course of our movement. The 
usual standpoint is that psychoanalytically 
trained experts are to realise the fruitful 
possibilities of the new system of thought ; 
but it may well happen that the leadership 
will for a long time remain in the hands of 
the " professional " leaders. I may have 
further occasion to refer to corrections, new 
applications, and ethical relationships. This 
much, at least, I can confidently assert at 
the present stage of the enquiry. Without 
being false to its psychological centre, to its 

» F. Werfel, op. cit. 



SOCIAL ORGANISATION 83 

essential etymological significance, to its primal 
source of energy, psychoanalysis, that powerful 
international spiritual movement, may boldly 
undertake the realisation of its social aims. 
For, in the end comes action. 



PART TWO 

SOCIOLOGICAL TASKS OF 
PSYCHOANALYSIS 



CHAPTER ONE 

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 

IN Part One, Sociological Results of Psycho- 
analysis, I formulated a distinction between 
results which had been achieved by the direct 
observation of society and those which had 
been achieved by the psychological and 
psychiatric study of individuals. The results 
belonging to the former class were again 
divided into two groups : the first of these 
comprised items of knowledge' concerning more 
or less primitive collective ideas (especially 
myths) ; the second comprised items of know- 
ledge concerning primitive social structure. 
I expressed the opinion that, although the 
last-named branch of study is the typically 
sociological field of investigation, the most 
important sociological results had been secured 
by means of psychoanalysis proper. We now 
have to throw light on the possibilities which 
lie open to psychoanalysis upon the sociological 
field, and to outline researches deliberately 
aiming in this direction. In addition, and 



88 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

above all, we shall attempt to give an example 
of the realisation of one of these possibilities. 

The conscious sociological orientation of 
psychoanalysis would appropriately belong to 
a higher stage of organisation in general. 
Hitherto, psychoanalysis has achieved ^ the 
observation of social phenomena in the follow- 
ing way. The psychoanalyst, having again and 
again discovered in his patients symbolical 
expressions of typical contents of the un- 
conscious, has then noted in mass psychology 
the presence of constructions of ostensibly 
similar form. In the case of primitive societies, 
also, attention was directed to these likenesses. 
The sociological trends of psychoanalysis in 
the narrower sense of the term, were present 
only in the germ. For psychoanalysis was 
in general concerned rather with the typical 
contents and their forms of expression, than 
with their various structural configurations, 
with characterology, with differential psycho- 
logy. By such methods it was impossible to 
produce even a moderately systematic picture. 

If, however, we subject to a more intensive 
statistical elaboration and systematisation 
the materials hitherto furnished by psycho- 
analysis, it would seem already certain, in 
view of what psychoanatysis has taught 
concerning the role of society in the develop- 



GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 89 

ment of the individual, that interesting 
sociological results would be secured. 

Above all it would be important to note 
the social environment of the patients under 
treatment. We are familiar with the factors 
which contribute to the causing of a psycho- 
neurosis. Repression is a preeminently social 
process. The pecuniary circumstances of the 
patient, the class to which he belongs, his 
occupation, the intellectual and social level 
of the environment of his childhood's days, 
i.e. of his family, are by no means indifferent. 
Freud x discusses the comparative destinies 
of girls belonging respectively to a propertyless 
and to a well-to-do family. The former is 
able to secure freer satisfaction of the impulsive 
life, whereas the latter, unequal to the demands 
of repression, becomes a neurotic being (of 
course this is but one of many possible contrasts, 
but it is a frequent form). Medical practi- 
tioners have long been aware that neuroses are 
especially common among well-to-do families, 
whereas psychoses predominate among the 
poorer classes of the population. Unquestion- 
ably a part cause of this lies in the physical 
conditions, which contribute especially to 
engender psychoses, for these disorders find 

1 Vorlesungen zur Einfuhrung in die Psychoanalyse, 
Allgemeine Neurosenlehre, Vienna, 1907, p. 407. 



90 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

a more favourable soil in material want. 
There must, however, also be psychical 
determinants. Psychoanalysis teaches that 
the two psychoses which are most accessible 
to analytic study, paranoia and paraphrenia, 
differ in their mechanism from the psycho- 
neuroses, especially in this, that in the two 
former the disorders of the ego predominate — 
in association with narcissistic fixation. Now 
uncertainty as to the position of the ego 
begins very early in the families of the poor. 
In our consideration of social relationships, 
however, we have to take many things into 
account besides financial position. First of 
all, financial position and class status do not 
necessarily coincide. Entirely different ideo- 
logies and mental constellations prevail in an 
impoverished patrician family, on the one hand, 
and in a family of working-class origin that 
has risen to a competence, on the other ; like 
differences are seen as between a middle- 
class family and an aristocratic family enjoying 
the same income. The available means do 
not in themselves produce either stability 
or recklessness ; they do not produce either 
steadfast clinging to tradition or love for 
innovation ; nor do they account for the 
varying family environment of the child. We 
have to remember that occupation exercises 



GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 91 

an influence in other spheres than those in 
which class is at work ; that class exercises 
its influence in other spheres than those in 
which material position is at work ; and 
so on. Religious and other traditions, and 
various special qualities, must be considered. 
Only a detailed study of the facts can throw 
light on these questions. 

The objection might be raised that this 
would involve a return from psychoanalysis to 
a purely descriptive and superficial psychiatric 
method ; that it would imply a renunciation 
of the endeavour to trace out the mechanism 
of the disease, and would lead us to look once 
more for purely external " causes." There is 
no foundation for any such criticism. Psycho- 
analysis has already displayed lively interest 
in the family position of the patient, and has 
paid peculiar attention to the qualities of the 
father. Closely considered, this might be held 
not to belong to the analysis of the psyche, 
but might be regarded as a necessary utilisation 
of the data acquired by psychoanalysis. In 
a word, it is the systematic juxtaposition of 
psychoanalytical data with other facts not 
acquired by analysis. It would not so much 
mean that the analyst would deduce a psychical 
disorder from the social circumstances of the 
parents, as that he would connect its genesis 



92 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

with the special circumstances of their married 
life. Of this much I am certain, that if the 
huge mass of available material were subjected 
to some such more intensive comparison and 
differentiation, the further analytical increase 
of the material would be facilitated, for the 
process would render possible the fixation 
of details which have so far been left out of 
the reckoning. What we have in view, 
therefore, is not to replace psychoanalysis, 
but to render it more profound. There can 
be no doubt that the material and the symbol- 
ism of the unconscious exhibit remarkable 
similarity in different individuals. Every 
analyst has noted the deviations, the varying 
texture, of the material and its phenomenal 
forms. An understanding of these things would 
be notably enhanced if a light were thrown 
upon their relationships to the situation of 
the individual. 

But why, when we speak of this situation, 
do we lay so much stress upon social position ? 
For this reason, because in the psychical 
sphere the social position of the patient gives 
occasion for the deduction of general laws. 
I do not think that any psychiatrist can fail 
to devote conscientious attention to the 
patient's bodily state. Psychoanalysts, too, 
if we except those of Adler's school with their 



GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 93 

doctrine of the " inferiority of organs/' pay 
attention to the secondary psychosexual 
functions of the various organs essential to 
the maintenance of life. A more precise and 
detailed study of these interrelations beween 
soma and psyche must be the task of biology, 
or of the biological doctrine of the impulsive 
life, wherein analysis will obviously have to 
play a leading part. Upon the other side 
of mental development we find the influence 
of the family entourage and of additional 
elements in the environment. These additional 
elements, comprise in part those of a chance 
character, which, owing to their immediacy, 
come to the surface abundantly in every 
analysis. But the more permanent elements 
of the environment are those social character- 
istics we have just been discussing. They 
less readily press to the front of the stage in 
the course of the analysis, but any far-reaching 
development of analytical science must take 
them adequately into account. Such a more 
differential and more systematic psychology 
would not be a metaphysical or dialectical 
degeneration of psychoanalysis. It would 
merely imply the fuller organisation and 
promotion of the science, would necessitate 
a more thrifty utilisation of the raw material, 
and would presuppose a more fruitful collection 



94 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

of data. Analysis would remain the empirical 
centre of the method, but would acquire 
greater significance. A number of socio- 
psychological questions, to the answering of 
which analysis has as yet contributed no more 
than indirectly by its search for analogies to 
typical mental constructions, would now 
become more directly accessible to actual 
analysis. 

In the first section, the idea was more than 
once outlined that a link between two branches 
of research would prove of almost equal use 
to both. We need not consider the advantages 
that might accrue to psychoanalysis from 
such a supplementary study ; what concerns 
us here is the profit to sociology. It is 
essential to this science that those who study 
it should be acquainted with the influences 
which society and its subdepartments exercise 
upon the individual mind. They must be 
in a position to observe the unconscious 
stirrings of the masses, not only in their results, 
but likewise in their course, and indeed in the 
nascent state. When the sociologist has at 
his disposal data concerning the manifest and 
empirically discovered psychical correlates of 
the various social happenings, he will be able 
to form far sounder judgments of social 
dynamics, social possibilities, and social aims. 



GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 95 

This of course does not imply that sociological 
research will become superfluous, any more 
than that psychoanalytical study will become 
superfluous. Such a development would be 
a retrogression of science, whereas the proposed 
integration would be an advance. 

Ferenczi holds [oral report] that, as part of 
a neurotic syndrome, there may be a stirring 
of sexual desire towards members of a different 
social class from the patient's. The psycho- 
logical study of this phenomenon will pre- 
sumably help to explain why even persons 
inspired by thoroughly democratic sentiments 
and uninfluenced by material considerations, 
will venerate the nobility ; and what part so 
irrational an attitude may play in social 
transformations, in revolutionary outbreaks, 
etc. This branch of psychoanalytical study 
will not, of course, serve to explain why such 
transformations and outbreaks occur ; but 
it should certainly serve to throw light upon 
the mechanism of these processes, upon the 
forms under which they usually manifest 
themselves, upon changes in ideology, upon 
inhibitions, etc. Another interesting state- 
ment of Ferenczi's refers to the attitude of 
impecunious patients towards the doctor. He 
considers that there are two distinct types of 
patient. Those belonging to one of these types 



96 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

feel a reverence for the doctor as the repre- 
sentative of a higher class and a person 
endowed with great power. Those of the 
other type are defiant and stubborn, feeling 
towards the doctor the mistrust and hatred 
which they feel for everyone belonging to. the 
master class. We are immediately reminded 
that a similar duality of outlook prevails 
towards the clergy among the broad masses 
of the people. A study of the transference 
of affect to the physician, especially as it 
occurs among poor and uncultured patients, 
may help us to an understanding of clericalism 
and anticlericalism among the folk. On the 
other hand, to keep to the same example, 
we may expect to find characteristic varieties. 
Suspicion of the man whose function it is 
to know things, and suspicion of the man 
who is in God's confidence, are not identical. 
We must not uncritically transfer to the 
latter, observations that have been made 
regarding the former ; and conversely. 

An important element in social relationships 
is constituted by the mental characteristics 
of the various nationalities, races, and culture- 
groups. The expansion of psychoanalytical 
study would help us to learn in what nations 
particular impulsive trends are dominant, 
which symbols are most widely diffused, which 



GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 97 

constructions and which manifestations are 
proper to the individual nations. We are 
practically justified in assuming that such 
characteristics exist. It seems most improb- 
able that the groups of qualities which in- 
dubitably stamp particular nations — which 
produce a national aroma so to speak — are 
mere mixtures of such general traits as civilisa- 
tion and barbarism, tenacity and fickleness, 
trustworthiness and un trust worthiness. These 
cannot suffice to account for the matter. The 
problem of the origin of national qualities 
belongs chiefly to the spheres of geography, 
history, and sociology ; but the inner mechan- 
ism of these qualities cannot be fully elucidated 
without analytical research. 

We owe to Maeder an attempt at the system- 
atic study of the English national character — 
not directly analytical, but guided by psycho- 
analytical ideas. 1 The author describes the 
two main types of English youth, the " puppy " 
and the " girl," the dominant part played 
by women (" management "), the widespread 
sexual repression, the manifestations of anal- 
erotic character traits, the cult of pet animals, 
and hero-worship. Noteworthy is his con- 
cluding observation that the English character 

1 Psychoanalytische Eindriicke von einer Reise in England, 
Imago, 1 91 2. 

7 



98 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

is far from producing a general impression 
of being neurotic ; the prevailing repression 
seems to be effected almost' without disturb- 
ance, to be successful. It would be interesting 
to carry Maeder's study further, in part by 
the use of the psychoanalytical material 
accumulated by British investigators, and in 
part by a consideration of the light which the 
thus-ascertained character traits throw upon 
other British qualities and upon the course of 
British policy. The peculiar hypocrisy of the 
British (not wholly antipathetic), the hypocrisy 
which is so manifest in British foreign policy, 
becomes unquestionably more comprehensible 
to one who is acquainted with the manifestations 
of British prudery. The partial intensification 
of repression, and on the other hand the 
almost complete disappearance of the subjection 
of women, are doubtless connected with the 
peculiar cleavage between English traditional- 
ism and English rationalism. There may also 
be some connexion between this successful 
repression and the continued success of Britain 
in its relations with the foreign world. There 
is a point of contact between navalism and 
sexual symbolism ; the " ship " is of the 
feminine gender. 

Passing to consider other group character- 
istics, we may recall that Freud makes a 



GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 99 

passing reference to the comparative freedom 
of the Viennese population in sexual matters. 1 
This is of course related to the well-known 
" easy-going " characteristics of the Viennese. 
It would be impossible in the present sketch 
to suggest where the determining causes may 
lie. Let me next allude to the Prussian 
junkerdom, a phenomenon often described, 
which unquestionably derives in part from 
nonrational erotic impulses. One of its 
defenders, Scheler, 2 frankly declares that 
western armies and their ideology signify 
militarism for a purpose, whereas German 
armies signify temperamental militarism. This 
would imply that the German army was not 
so much the technical instrument for achieving 
the purposes of war, as the embodiment of a 
self-sufficing hedonistic impulse. Now we are 
aware that such an impulse can be analysed. 
The more systematic study of national traits 
by psychoanalytical methods will not become 
possible until psychoanalysis has secured 
wider recognition and has been more generally 
practised. It is essential that country- 
dwellers should be analysed as well as town- 

1 Zur Geschichte der psychoanalytischen Bewegung, Samm- 
lung kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, IV, Vienna, 1918, 
p. 42. — The History of the Psychoanalytic Movement, New 
York, 1917, p. 31. 

* Die Ursachen des Deutschenhasses, Leipzig, 191 7. 



100 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

dwellers. It seems probable that folklorist 
studies may contribute to our knowledge in 
this respect. 

Finally, psychoanalysis can assist in certain 
social constructions, can render valuable aid 
to various trends and movements. The main 
topic of this volume, however, is the indirect 
application of psychoanalysis to social move- 
ments. The task is certainly more difficult 
than the analytical study of mythology, for 
in the former branch of investigation the 
elements conflicting with the reality principle x 
that are elucidated by psychoanalysis give 
greater scope for economic and rationalist 
deductions — and the complications are so great 
that their unravelling becomes very difficult. 
How difficult, for example, would it be, in 
studying the origin of capitalism, to elucidate 
the part played by some immanent disorganisa- 
tion in the middle ages, the part played by 
anal-erotic character traits, and the connexion 
between the two. I consider that the combined 
work of many investigators will be requisite 
for such studies. But I may lay down the 
following general principles. 

Psychoanalysis is best fitted to undertake 
the study of those constructions in which the 
elements conflicting with the reality principle 

1 Lorenz, Der politische Mythus, Imago, 1920. 



GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 101 

are most numerous. 1 The science can do more 
to explain mass impulses than to explain the 
phases of industrial development. Psycho- 
analysis is especially at home in the domain 
of the regressions. Adaptation to reality must 
apriori play a more notable part in anagogic 
movements. But since all such movements 
must possess a regressive libido-capital, they 
cannot be excluded from the domain of psycho- 
analysis, any more than sublimation in general 
can be excluded ; the regressive element 
remains of permanent importance. Our study, 
however, must not put forward the claim that 
the construction under consideration is to be 
simply referred to an individuo-psychological 
schema ; this would obviously be an attempt 
at an unduly crude simplification. On the 
other hand, care must be taken to avoid 
wandering off into the logic and dialectics of 
the question or into the critique of conflicting 
outlooks, and against entering too far into 
the investigation of the basic social reality, 
for ail these things lie beyond the field of 
study. The aim is merely to rediscover in 
the social constructions the unconscious 
tendencies and their modes of expression that 
have been made manifest in the individual 

1 Cf. Rank and Sachs, Die Bedeutung der Psychoanalyse 
fur die Geisteswissenschaften, Wiesbaden, 191 3. 



102 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

psyche — to rediscover them in whatever form 
they may manifest themselves. If we should 
suceed in this without any falsification of the 
data, the results will be applicable in various 
directions. Our general understanding of 
sociology will be facilitated ; gaps will be filled 
in ; hints will be furnished as to how libido- 
masses which are working along dangerous 
paths can be rendered harmless or can be 
diverted to useful routes. Perhaps, too, 
further light will be thrown upon the individual 
psyche, it may be in relation to the reciprocal 
influences between the elements conflicting 
with the reality principle, and reality itself. 

As topic for my first venture, I choose 
Anarchist Communism, especially as a move- 
ment whose assumed cohesion may have more 
light thrown on it in the sequel. Why I do this, 
why I am convinced that this tendency- 
complex is of an entirely regressive character, 
will not perhaps be fully intelligible at the 
outset. I may, however, point out here that 
it is equipped with a vigorous and direct 
hedonistic theory, that it looks towards an 
earthly paradise as its goal, and that it aims 
at the complete destruction of the extant form 
of society. Wherever it wins to control, it 
brings about extreme disorganisation and a 
relapse to more primitive forms. I think, 



GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS 103 

therefore, that psychoanalysis promises in- 
teresting results in this field. Moreover, 
the topical importance of the problem, and 
the widespread general knowledge of certain 
forms of communism, render it desirable that 
psychoanalysts should turn their attention 
to this social complex. 



CHAPTER TWO 

ATTEMPT AT THE PSYCHOANALYSIS 
OF ANARCHIST COMMUNISM 

Anarchism leads to communism and communism to 
anarchism. 

P. Kropotkin. 

The communist state which would be brought into existence 
by the proletarian revolution, would be nothing else than a 
titanic system of landed proprietorship, embracing all the 
land in the country. 

A. Daniel, 1910. 

A state which should undertake the comprehensive care of 
all members of the population on equal terms . . r . would 
be the most complete renewal of the matriarchal type of 
community of primitive days. 

E. Lorenz. 

I 

Definitions 

BEFORE we attempt the psychoanalysis of 
anarchist communism, we must explain 
what we understand by the term, and must 
forestall a number of possible misunderstand- 
ings. 

104 



ANARCHIST COMMUNISM 105 

Many believe that anarchism, as extreme 
individualism, and communism, as extreme 
socialism, are polar opposites. Some assume 
that these poles come in contact, in virtue of 
the principle that extremes meet. This view 
is erroneous. It would be superfluous to 
expound here the problems of individualism 
and socialism. Enough to refer to the trends 
of anarchism and communism as ordinarily 
understood and as enunciated by their most 
distinguished advocates. Anarchism demands 
the abolition, not only of dominion, despotism, 
authority forcibly exercised over the individual, 
but in general of laws, regulations, and restric- 
tions. Communism does not imply the maxi- 
mum of social cooperation, but the direct 
psychical fusion of individuals in a manner 
that would annihilate all partitions between 
them. Why, then, does one aim involve 
the other ? Anarchism wishes to abolish rules 
and restrictions. Should this be effected, there 
would necessarily ensue a war of all against 
all, the absolute dissolution of the community. 
But this is not the aim of the anarchists. Such 
dissolution would be avoidable on one con- 
dition, namely, if human selfishness were so 
infinitesimal and self-sacrifice and solidarity 
were so intense, that without any law human 
beings would voluntarily seek one another's 



106 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

good. But this can only ensue through an 
actual welding together, through communism. 
Now let us turn to the basic principle of com- 
munism : From every man according to his 
powers, to every man according to his needs. 
Apart from momentary exercises of will, man 
does not work to the limit of his powers even 
under the most extreme coercion, but only 
does so in a spirit of voluntary sacrifice. On 
the other hand, no compulsion is requisite 
to make man satisfy his needs. Such a 
system is only conceivable if the needs of every 
man were such that their full satisfaction 
would not interfere with the equally full 
satisfaction of the needs of others. Conse- 
quently the anarchistic and communistic ideals 
are permanently coterminous. It is pure 
anarchism that men should unreservedly make 
others' interests their own when all external 
direction has been abolished ; the unrestricted 
fusion of individualities is pure communism. 
It is true that there is also an individualist 
anarchism, which takes self-interest as its 
basis. But even the anarchists of this school 
are constrained to recognise that progress along 
these lines will only be possible if human 
beings respect one another's claims on pruden- 
tial grounds, if they impose restrictions upon 
themselves for well-considered reasons of their 



ANARCHIST COMMUNISM 107 

own advantage. This, however, implies the 
transcending of anarchism. It is w r hat Franz 
Oppenheimer has termed " acratia " ; it is in- 
dividualism ; or perhaps we might better 
term it " personalism," since it implies that 
the community consists of self-controlling 
individuals, of personalities. Now the most 
elementary degree of sociological insight should 
suffice to convince the student that the way 
to this highly differentiated state of affairs 
is not to be found through the complete 
destruction of extant society. 

There likewise exists a despotic form of 
communism, in which goods are distributed, 
not according to needs, but with mechanical 
equality. On the one hand, this communism 
is dogmatic, levelling, and fusionist ; it closely 
resembles mechanical solidarity. On the other 
hand, equal distribution involves a transition 
towards justice, towards collectivism, whose 
essential principle is distribution in accordance 
with the work done by the recipient. Collec- 
tivism of this character, with socialised pro- 
duction, is, as Kropotkin aptly remarks, a 
logical contradiction. 1 It is quite impossible 
for any council to determine the value of labour ; 

J P. Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread, Chapman and 
Hall, London, 1906. Chapter XIII, The Collectivist Wages 
System. 



108 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

this can only be decided by free exchange, 
in the absence of monopoly. But a community 
in which there prevailed free competition and 
a purely working property, would be a society 
of personal collectivism, of organic solidarity, 
and would be the very opposite of anarchist 
communism. With such a society, therefore, 
we are not concerned. If we allude to it at 
all, it will only be by way of illustration. 

Let me enumerate some of the traits 
which are common to anarchism and to com- 
munism, which distinguish both from per- 
sonal collectivism, and from the intermediate 
systems. Both reject private property, the 
differentiation of economic life as the division 
of labour guaranteeing surplus production, 
and the differentiation or the very existence 
of the functions of the state. There is a yet 
closer uniformity exhibited by the two move- 
ments. Whatever differences they may mani- 
fest after they have been established, both 
systems look for the salvation of the world 
to a revolt of the oppressed which shall sweep 
away all that has hitherto existed. There is 
no individualist anarchist movement of any 
dimensions worth considering. The com- 
munism of the social democrats has a definitely 
collectivist trend, without, however, aban- 
doning its ultimate aim. We must not under- 



ANARCHIST COMMUNISM 109 

estimate the importance of the individualistic 
trends in social democracy, the trends that 
are statist, democratic, and realist. Never- 
theless, this does not imply that we cannot 
find among the social democrats the chief 
elements of the communist and proletarian 
position, at any rate now, when in consequence 
of the war a powerful communist trend has 
manifested itself. I do not posit the existence 
of an anarchist communist movement entirely 
free from contradictions ; I merely presume 
a certain fundamental unity, which is crystal- 
lisable in a unified type of social organisation 
(cf. §IX). 

It is, moreover, needless to explain that, 
for the purposes of this investigation, anarchist 
communist literature — even when considered 
in outline — is just as incomprehensible as are 
the other manifestations of the movement. 
I have done my best to take into account its 
most typical and important elements. Let 
me repeat that my aim is not to criticise 
anarchist communism, not even to write a 
most elementary sociology or psychology of 
the doctrine, but to provide as far as I am 
able a psychoanalytical interpretation. This, 
however, involves references to anarchist com- 
munist sociology, and even to its critical 
method. In the present state of our ter- 



110 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

minology, morphological designations fre- 
quently carry with them implications of judg- 
ments of value (e.g. evolution, reversion). 
Were we to be too scrupulous in the avoidance 
of criticism, we should turn our backs on 
knowledge. Besides, it is impossible to avoid 
drawing certain distinctions, as between theory 
and practice, between programs and possi- 
bilities. 

II 

Anarchist Sociology 

The essence of anarchism is the detestation 
of all law, the revolt against law and any 
kind of outward coercion. Augustin Hamon, 
who is sympathetic to the anarchist movement, 
has studied its psychology upon the basis of 
materials obtained by the circulation of a 
questionnaire. In his book, 1 he maintains 
that the tendency to revolt comes first, 
" individualism " second. But this individual- 
ism is of a kind which does not recognise 
private property. In one of the answers we 
read : " Everything belongs to all ; nothing 
belongs to anyone individually unless he is 
actually using it." There are also allusions 

1 Psychologie de l'anarchiste-socialiste, Paris, 1895. 



ANARCHIST COMMUNISM 111 

to the family community as a social aim. 
Another reply condemns the cult of the ego. 
Another correspondent writes : " Physical 
needs are the same for every one." Thus, as 
is plain from the quotations, the spirit of 
revolt does not signify the autonomy of the 
individual, but, as Hamon himself insists, 
absolute antitraditionalism and the cosmo- 
politanism which this carries with it. The 
entire lack of roots is disclosed in the fanatic- 
ism which would throw everything overboard ; 
perhaps it is also shown by the measureless 
innovationism to which the book refers, the 
spirit which confidently regards all the extant 
as fit for the scrap-heap, and demands a clean 
sweep. Evidence of this spirit is afforded 
by religious indifference, by the abandonment 
of everything which links us to the existing 
world, by fanatical adhesion to the anarchist 
ideal. Let us take examples from various 
authors. Among the Greeks, Zeno was an 
anarchist, an opponent of private property ; 
Carpocrates was a communist anarchist. 
In the middle ages, Amalrich of Bona ad- 
vocated a communist form of anarchism, 
preaching the mystical direct union of the 
individual soul with God. P. Chelcicky 
emphasised the abandonment of law, as did 
subsequently J. P. Proudhon and Johann Most. 



112 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

Improvised decisions were to take the place 
of laws. Alexander Herzen wrote : " Long 
live chaos and destruction. Make way for 
the future. We are the executioners of the 
past/' Mihail Bakunin declared : " The best 
constitution in the world would not satisfy 
me"; he considered the only good life would 
be without either law or majority principle. 
It is obvious that if the majority can in 
no circumstances impose constraint on the 
minority, the only way of avoiding complete 
atomisation will be that all men shall share 
the same view, shall automatically move in 
a single direction. Bearing this in mind, 
let us proceed with our study of anarchist 
revolutionism, which actually involves the 
repudiation of every statist and democratic 
majority principle. 

We know that the prototype of all revolt is 
rebellion against the father. The reader of 
the first section may recall the psychological 
identity which was established between the 
father and society. From this outlook, 
anarchism might be regarded as an extreme 
form of revolt against the father ; the revolt 
of those who are not content to accept paternal 
authority in a modified, sublimated, non- 
despotic, democratic form, a form which in- 
volves no oppression, but supplies rational 



ANARCHIST COMMUNISM 113 

inhibition or guidance ; the revolt of those who 
wish to destroy all such coercion in the germ. 

It is, however, undeniable that at least the 
communist wing of the anarchists, by far the 
most numerous, does not aim at the abolition 
of all external influence. If, indeed, the in- 
fluence of the community is so powerful that 
the individual accepts it blindly, if, that is to 
say, the consciousness does not feel any 
coercion, we may speak of the total abandon- 
ment of individual autonomy. We have proto- 
types of this condition : in the foetus ; to a 
lesser extent in the infant ; and to a still 
lesser extent in the child. The radical destruc- 
tion of paternal coercion would thus be a 
return to the painless and pleasurable maternal 
coercion ; the correlate of the slaying of the 
father is incest with the mother. It now 
becomes easy for us to understand why in- 
dividualist anarchism has comparatively little 
significance, and why it cannot supply the 
ideology of a movement. It does not attach 
to parricide the idea of incest with the mother, 
but the idea of emancipation. Now this does 
not suffice to satisfy the great aim of regres- 
sion, and it is therefore doomed to remain 
an isolated phenomenon. 

From this the cult of the tabula rasa is 
entirely deducible. Those trends which aim at 

8 



114 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

abolishing dominion, at acratia or pure demo- 
cracy, at the complete reduction of coercion to 
law and regulation, naturally desire to maintain 
and further the previous evolution, in so far 
as it was really evolution ; they are content 
with a reform, however radical, of the extant. 
But the anarchists, desiring the complete 
abolition of paternal coercion, move in an 
opposite direction, move regressively towards 
the killing of the father. They desire neither 
an intermediate stage nor an evolution, but 
simply the renewal of the titanic deed. It is 
owing to this intransigeance that communist 
anarchism is less widely diffused than com- 
munism in the narrower sense. The matter 
will become clearer when we study communist 
regression. 

The passionate and impulsive revolt of the 
anarchists against all restrictions, does not, 
of course, entail the freedom proper to the 
adult, but only the unrestrictedness of the 
child, or, to speak more precisely, of the foetus. 
It corresponds to a condition wherein there is 
no need for adaptation, or for conflict of any 
sort. Rousseau's " return to nature " is purely 
anarchistic ; we know that nature is the 
symbol of the mother. 1 Hatred of theistic 

1 Cf. H. Sachs, Ueber Naturgefiihl, Imago, 1912. — E. Hitsch- 
mann, Ein Dichter und sein Vater, Imago, IV, 1915-16, p. 337. 



ANARCHIST COMMUNISM 115 

religions does not imply the lack of all religious 
sentiment, of pantheistic sentiment, for 
instance. Far from it ; fanaticism, abandon- 
ment of individual aims, complete loss of 
interest in the other elements of life, are 
religious and antirational. Hamon lays stress 
on the proselytising tendencies of anarchism. 
All that the anarchist is alien to is the religiosity 
and the antirationalism of extant historical 
traditions ; he desires, so to speak, to regress 
into the intra-uterine existence with its pseudo- 
rationalistic religiosity, and to destroy every- 
thing which stands in his way. The anarchistic 
ideal is, beyond question, also the abolition of 
repression. But repression is not to be 
replaced by self-critical judgment ; it is to 
be replaced by libertinism, And yet (this is 
the essential matter, and almost the only 
one which bears any relationship to reality), 
in theory at least, and for the time being, the 
impulses of man are to be of such a character 
that their indulgence will not render social 
life impossible. Herein, however, lies the 
essential conflict with the reality principle, 
and therefore the essential impracticability 
of anarchism. In psychoanalytical termin- 
ology, we can explain as follows why social 
progress is possible and why anarchism is 
impossible. Social progress is possible because 



116 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

it aims, not at repression, but at self-critical 
judgment ; the possibility of this substitution 
has been proved. Anarchism, on the other 
hand, aims at unrestricted self-indulgence, 
and therewith at a complete transformation of 
the impulses. But all our experience leads us 
to deny that this is possible. Anarchism is 
the faithful social projection of the uterus, 
with repudiation of the manifest uterus wish ; 
this construction, in the simplicity of its 
relationships, bears witness to the utter 
absurdity of the doctrine. The system does 
not seem to be sufficiently developed to bear 
comparison with more complex psychical con- 
structions, such as the psychoneuroses. It 
offers, however, interesting material for study. 



Ill 

Psychical Characteristics of Anarchism 

There is one trait of anarchism with which 
the psychoanalyst has long been familiar. 
The anarchist doctrine proclaims complete 
solidarity, declares rules restricting the in- 
dividual to be superfluous, announces universal 
brotherhood. On the other hand, in the public 
mind, the concept of anarchism is for excellent 



ANARCHIST COMMUNISM 117 

reasons associated with that of a thirst for 
blood, of bomb throwing, of the desolation of 
" art for art's sake." It is but a step from 
Reclus the vegetarian, who conceived of the 
whole world as united in a single family, to 
Nechayeff and propaganda by deed. Bakunin's 
phrase, "brotherhood by force, " gives an 
excellent picture of this cleavage. Obviously 
we here encounter a variety of ambivalence, 
something which is not rational but affective. 
Could not psychoanalysis throw light upon 
this application of the technical term ? The 
primary instance of ambivalence, we might 
say the leading instance, derives from that 
society of brethren who, in the primitive horde, 
had united to slay the father. 1 The ambi- 
valence did not, properly speaking, relate to the 
father. Towards him there was felt, in the 
instance under consideration, an inward, un- 
restricted hatred ; and his ambivalent affec- 
tive value did not make itself felt until later, 
when the time for the restoration of the father 
came. The ambivalence applied in the first 
instance to the community of the brethren, 
a community to which in the primitive con- 
sciousness no sociological significance attached. 
This community had two concrete points of 

1 Cf., in addition to Freud's Totem und Tabu, B. von 
Felszeghy, Panik und Pan-Komplex, Imago, 1920. 



118 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

condensation : the first of these was the 
mother, from whom the brethren were derived, 
and to whom (or, to express it more boldly, 
into whom) they all wished to return — the 
libido concerned her ; the other was the father, 
who kept the sons away from their goal and 
held sway over them— the hatred concerned 
him. Anarchism is a regression to this atti- 
tude of mind. Its ideal is brotherhood in the 
primitive sense of the word, the confraternal 
uterine introversion. The anarchist rages irre- 
concilably against everything that represents 
a hindrance to the satisfaction of this desire, 
against the dominion of the father and all 
that it signifies. The eroticism which had 
developed among the brethren was merely 
the precipitation of the ungratified incest 
wish, with the maintenance of the incest 
principle. This explains the simultaneous 
enthusiasm for community, and hostility to- 
wards society, manifested by the anarchists. 
Neither of these sentiments really bears upon 
the abstract concept of society. The former con- 
cerns the mother and the return to the mother ; 
the latter concerns the father and the social 
cooperation which takes place under his sign. 
The comparatively scientific formulas of 
anarchist writers have at their base this 
primevally ancient affective content, which 



ANARCHIST COMMUNISM 119 

can serve as the foundation of theories ; but 
the content itself, remote from all theories, 
signifies the regressive wish of the clan of 
brethren. 

In this way, perhaps, we can gain a glimpse 
into the depths of anarchist projection and 
absurdity. According to the psychoanalytic 
hypotheses, after the parricide the brethren 
did not attain their goal, and were unable to 
get along without the father. The principal 
cause of this turn of affairs may have been the 
actual impossibility of the incest gratification. 
In the course of evolution this led to various 
methods of compensation. The mother was 
replaced by other women (by sisters at first, 
and subsequently by having recourse to 
exogamy). Another resource was the 
invention and utilisation of the earth 
symbol. Another was identification with 
the father. At first this was taken literally, 
by the adoption of the father's relationship 
towards the mother. Later, sublimation hav- 
ing occurred, the identification took rather the 
form of adopting the relationship expressed 
in that of the prince to the country. 1 Last 
of all came modern democracy. Anarchism 
rejects these institutions which provide satis- 
faction by devious routes and in ways whereby 

1 Lorenz, op. cit. 



120 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

the primeval condition is completely trans- 
formed. The anarchists detest legal marriage, 
popular traditions, international organisation, 
and democracy. Nevertheless, as we have 
pointed out, anarchists must keep in touch 
with reality in one respect ; they must recog- 
nise the actual state of affairs as an extant 
reality, even if it is to be completely destroyed. 
From this results the automatic social pro- 
jection of the primitive wish, the transforma- 
tion of the paternal and suprapaternal com- 
munity to become an infrapaternal community. 
We do not know to what extent the success 
of the anarchist principle would bring about 
a retrogression to the primitive horde. As 
far as communism is concerned, we shall see 
that such a tendency is at work ; we shall see 
that the pansocial idea of humanity has 
no real content, being merely a projection 
adjusted to the contemporary state of affairs. 
As the ultimate absurdity of anarchist doctrine, 
however, we encounter the primal absurdity, 
to wit, the impossibility of the actual union 
within the mother. Social projection is the 
maintenance of social cohesion in conjunction 
with the abolition of all regulation. Just as 
the slaying of the father necessarily resulted 
in the isolation of the mother (Penelope could 
not give her hand to any of the suitors), so 



ANARCHIST COMMUNISM 121 

the abolition of the stable organisation would 
necessarily involve the destruction of societ}^ 1 
Let us consider a few additional charac- 
teristics of anarchism, characteristics which 
distinguish it from communism, or to speak 
more precisely, from the purely Marxist pro- 
letarian ideology. Hamon lays stress upon 
the anarchist's desire for a logical social order. 
This signifies a desire for simplicity and com- 
prehensibility without traditions or compli- 
cations. The logic is a logic of passion, a 
physicist logic " which tolerates no contra- 
dictions/ ■ The corresponding attitude of mind 
is not that of the political radicalism which, 
refusing to subject itself to the inertia of 
tradition, desires to reorganise,society in accord- 
ance with the results of sociological research 
and rational conviction. Nor is it the attitude 
of the rigidly dogmatic and pseudorationalist 
Marxist system, although this is closely akin. 
Anarchism is not criticism, but cynicism ; it 
is not reform, but a tabula rasa. Looking 
upon it as a social conception, what corre- 
sponds to it in the general sphere is nihilism, 
the philosophy of the return to nullity, chaos. 
The libidinous symbolical significance of death 

1 On the other hand, the further sublimation of the father 
motif (and, parallel thereto, of the mother motif) is a possible 
and real conception. 



122 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

is comprised herein. Anarchism is logical in 
so far as it recognises that the social order 
is not only logical, but is likewise unrational 
and extralogical. The anarchist, however, does 
not strive after the elimination of the un- 
rational ; he does not attempt to make a logical 
use of the extralogical materials ; he aims 
at the void of immaterial logic as symbol of 
libido regression. 

The esoteric character of anarchism vividly 
recalls the clan of the brethren and the secret 
societies of savages. An invariable charac- 
teristic of anarchism, as compared with com- 
munism, is that anarchistic action is more 
individual and more in conflict with the 
criminal law. Bomb throwing is an entirely 
mystical, individual, unsophisticated copy of 
parricide. It is impossible to ascertain by 
what means the clan of the brethren may have 
carried out the act of parricide. It is, how- 
ever, a fact that in the preparation of bombs 
by the anarchistic associations, the anarchist 
technique and logic are most clearly illustrated 
— just as Marxist technique and logic are best 
illustrated by the dogmatism of the class war, 
and radical technique and logic by sociology. 

We cannot here attempt a thorough dis- 
cussion of the question in what epochs anar- 
chism, in the narrower sense of the term, 



ANARCHIST COMMUNISM 123 

flourishes, and what sort of individuals are 
marshalled in the ranks of the anarchist 
army. The anarchist movement is utterly 
devoid of the historicity and coordination 
which are proper to Marxism, for anarchism 
is too much in conflict with the reality principle 
and too individual to possess these qualities. 
In any case, the anarchists are personally 
speaking far more often pathological speci- 
mens than the communists are. Psycho- 
analysis of the former would consequently 
give more valuable results. Hamon admits 
that many moral and mental defectives join 
the anarchist movement. More important is 
the fact that anarchists for the most part are 
not typical proletarians. Many of them are 
petty bourgeois, but the anarchist ranks 
are recruited in especial from among those 
who work alone. Thus the anarchist trend 
would seem to be accentuated by the lack of 
social cooperation, probably in conjunction 
with arduous conditions of life. 1 

i I do not mean to imply that the petty bourgeois class 
is anarchistically inclined. There is no such thing as an 
anarchistic class ; and the petty bourgeois tends rather to 
be a conservative or a radical. To work alone entails nothing 
more than a good chance of complete regression. It cannot 
per se cause such regression. The so-called individualistic 
character of anarchism is connected with the asociality of 
foetal life. See below, where the case of the proletariat is 
considered. 



124 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

IV 

Psychical Characteristics of Communism 

Communism gives the preference to a motive 
which the anarchists regard merely as an 
indispensable condition, and one which can 
be fulfilled without any difficulty, namely, 
direct, mechanical solidarity rising superior 
to all individual interests. Unrestraint, the 
giving of free rein to impulse, which plays 
the chief part in anarchism, will for com- 
munists be a later development. Communism 
is, indeed, far more inclined to make conces- 
sions to the despotic principle than anarchism 
is inclined to make concessions to individual- 
ism. The communism of Plato recognised 
rules of life ; it was aristocratic ; it breathed 
the spirit of tutelage, the repudiation of 
individual autonomy. The communism of the 
early Christian associations was not essentially 
despotic, but was dominated by the aim to 
put a bridle upon desire ; this bridle was 
supplied by the cult of poverty, though the 
poverty was doubtless to be compensated by 
happiness in the life beyond. Saint-Simon's 
doctrine was a purely despotic communism. 
Compare also the Inca state, and Paraguay 



ANARCHIST COMMUNISM 125 

under Jesuit rule. The Marxist communism 
which is threatening contemporary civilisation, 
though anarchistic in its ultimate aims, is 
prepared to make a most extensive use of 
the coercive powers of the state, of militarism 
and of dogmatism. These methods, we are 
told, may have to be employed for years or 
even decades. 

Nevertheless it would be an error to believe 
that communism is nothing more than neo- 
feudalism with a libertarian gloss. In The 
State and Revolution, Lenin adopts and ampli- 
fies the Marx-Engels theory of the state. 
Every state, he declares, is a mechanism for 
exploitation and oppression in the. hands of 
the dominant class. The proletariat must 
use this instrument against its former tyrants. 
When by this means the system of exploitation 
and oppression has been completely shattered, 
the state will die out. What is the difference 
between this ideology and that of the anar- 
chists ? Merely that the anarchists are more 
intransigeant, while the communists are more 
methodical. Anarchism will hear of no delay 
in the application of force, and will tolerate 
no pause in the evolution towards brother- 
hood ; whereas communism endeavours to 
destroy existing society by seizing it in its 
own fortress. 



126 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

Before I expound the difference psycho- 
analytically, let me point out that communism 
is not only more methodical than anarchism, 
but is also more scientific, more accordant 
with facts, less impulsive. Its social sup- 
porters are proletarians. These, owing to 
their productive functions, and in virtue of 
the concentration of their forces, are naturally 
less averse than the anarchists from the work 
of social cooperation ; and their lives bring 
them into touch with reality, with industrial 
and economic technique. For this reason, 
the regressive element in communism is less 
extreme. There are, in fact, many indications 
that communists exhibit less hostility towards 
the father, or at least towards certain forms 
of the father imago. Enfantin, the leader of 
the Saint-Simonians, bore the title of Father. 
In Fourier's scheme it was expressly declared 
that there were to be rulers or unarchs ; and 
the supreme ruler, who was to reside in Con- 
stantinople, would be known as the omniarch. 
The anxiety which many earnest communists 
(Kropotkin, for instance) feel, lest under the 
dictatorship of the proletariat the dictatorship 
should become an end in itself, suffices to 
prove that there is no diametrical opposition 
between the communist spirit and paternal 
authority. The communist formula, " from 



ANARCHIST COMMUNISM 127 

everyone according to his powers, to everyone 
according to his needs," accepted in its literal 
sense, leads to anarchism. But from this 
interpretation there are two deviations. When 
we say that we expect from everyone work 
according to his powers, this may mean that 
work according to power is to be exacted 
by the state ; it may mean enforced altruism. 
On the other hand, the satisfaction of needs 
can be understood in the sense that the state 
shall prescribe what those needs are to be. 
This is, indeed, the condition of affairs in 
the first phase of communist society, the so- 
called socialist phase. There, everyone is a 
state employee. Apart from a comparatively 
small number of authoritative persons, all will 
receive the same wage or the same assignments. 
Consumption will be mechanically levelled, in 
respect of quality no less than of quantity. 

As long as communist society has failed 
to attain the stage of complete anarchism, 
it rests solely upon patriarchal foundations. 
Persons are subject to an authority which 
by hypothesis is benevolent, but which is 
absolute. Everyone is aware that the dicta- 
torship of the proletariat by no means signifies 
the dictatorship of the proletariat over the 
bourgeoisie ; but the dictatorship of the pro- 
letarian principle, incorporated in the leaders, 



128 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

over all members of the community and in 
especial over the proletarians themselves. It 
further signifies the deliberate proletarianisa- 
tion of society. Private property and an 
economy based upon exchange, which guarantee 
individual independence and autonomy., are 
to perish ; all persons are to become children 
of the state. For the time being, the state 
will have a well-defined paternal character. 
From this transitional form, the purely com- 
munistic " state " that is to follow will be 
distinguished (we can confidently predict) by 
its predominantly maternal character. 

Thus we maintain that communism signifies 
a compromise between the father principle 
and the mother principle ; but the assertion 
requires to be stated with greater precision. 
That with which we have to do is not a middle 
course between regression and evolution, but 
simply a mitigation of regression accompanied 
by a greater regard for reality. We have to 
do with a compromise, which can hardly be 
anything more than a compromise. Com- 
munism bears the same sort of relationship 
to anarchism as paranoia to paraphrenia (de- 
mentia praecox). The father principle is in 
this form likewise a regressive principle, asso- 
ciated of course with projection. According 
to Vandervelde, socialism is an " apparent " 



ANARCHIST COMMUNISM 129 

return to primitive methods of production, 
in which the production of use values for 
the social community will take the place of 
the production of values for the family com- 
munity, 1 I must here draw attention to one 
of the basic ideas of communism, namely 
that the undeveloped condition of social organi- 
sation will be combined with a measure of 
certain quanta among which we may include 
the comprehensiveness of the society, technical 
and cultural requisites, etc. But as a standard 
of human progress, it is not the quanta of 
products that are significant, even when these 
are forthcoming and are important ; what 
counts is the degree of advancement of social 
organisation. In the first section I showed 
the parallelism which exists' between Durk- 
heim's mechanical solidarity and Freud's 
repression ; and on the other hand the 
parallelism between organic solidarity and 
self-critical judgment. I contend that, not 
chronologically alone, but also in accordance 
with its essential nature, repression occupies 
a place between unrestricted self-indulgence 
and the reasoned condemnation of antisocial 
wishes. I consider that even in a society 
based upon mechanical solidarity, the sys- 

1 Vandervelde, Collectivism and Industrial Evolution, 
London, 1907, p. 163. 

9 



130 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

tematisation of outward coercion (militarism) 
represents an advance in the direction of 
organic solidarity. Thus the path of regres- 
sion runs much after this fashion : sublimated 
social order ; primitive father principle ; primi- 
tive mother principle. Logically this .path 
leads to anarchism, in so far as the regulatory 
functions of the state decay concomitantly 
with the regression. One cannot immediately 
explain the appearance of coercion, of tyranny, 
in the father stage. It would be erroneous 
to believe that the father is the first incor- 
poration of coercion, of the restriction of 
individual autonomy. In the father, coercion 
becomes more fully conscious, it already 
approximates to masterless rule. But the 
first incorporation is in the mother : the 
womb is the prototype of all prisons, and the 
umbilical cord is the prototype of all chains. 
Whilst maternal coercion possesses a high 
libidinous value (mother hypnosis), this libido- 
tinting by no means disappears in paternal 
coercion, though it becomes paler. This is 
proved by a number of homosexual-masochistic 
fixations (father hypnosis). 1 Mother eroticism, 
was not only the erotic feeling of man towards 

1 Cf. Jung, Die Bedeutung des Vaters fur das Schicksal 
des Einzelnen, Jahrbuch, I, 1909. — Concerning the hypnoses, 
cf. Ferenczi, Introjektion und Uebertragung, ibid. 



ANARCHIST COMMUNISM 131 

woman ; it was in part a brother eroticism 
(a feeling of man towards man), and in part 
a father eroticism (cf. Lorenz). The com- 
munist movement, therefore, arises from a 
social regressive tendency in the direction of 
the mother by way of the primitive father, 
in conflict with the contemporary, greatly 
sublimated manifestation of the father imago. 
A characteristically communist attitude (which 
has as its ideology the " relative value of 
personal freedom "j is the straightforwardly 
enthusiastic campaign against the feudalist- 
capitalist infringement of personal liberty ; 
which is followed, as soon as the communists 
attain power, by a sudden and affectively 
endorsed entire rejection of jthe concept of 
personal liberty. 1 

The reasons why the proletarian movement 
has taken this course will only become com- 
prehensible from the psychoanalytical stand- 
point when we have studied the position of 
the proletariat. 

1 In Budapest, after the proclamation of the Soviet 
Republic, I complained to a friend, who had always been a 
progressive and had recently become a communist, that the 
liberties gained by the revolution were now being thrown 
into the melting-pot, for criticism of the ordinances issued 
by the Soviet Government was strictly prohibited. He 
looked at me in astonishment, saying : " But what on earth 
do you find to complain of in the ordinances of the Soviet 
Government ? " 



132 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 



The Position of the Proletariat 

The position of the proletariat might be 
briefly described by saying that in the pro- 
letariat there is no opportunity for a number 
of more or less sublimatory forms of libido 
displacement, and that in consequence there 
occurs a dangerous damming-up of libido. 
Now this does not take place as concerns the 
individual proletarian, but as concerns the 
proletarian class, for the reason that the class, 
the proletarian community, offers the only 
refuge both in respect of the utilisation of 
libido and in respect of the preservation of 
the ego. I speak of the typical proletarian, 
without ignoring that all this can be applied 
only with reserve to a considerable part of 
the proletariat. Consequently, even a typically 
proletarian communism has often taken an 
" innocuous " turn, becoming democratic and 
collectivism 

Very important in the case of the prole- 
tarian is his poverty, when considered not 
so much absolutely as dynamically. He con- 
sumes the whole of his earnings, so that he 
can never save more than a trifling sum, 



ANARCHIST COMMUNISM 133 

and he has practically no prospect of rising 
out of his class. Nor is he threatened merely 
by poverty in his old age ; his existence is 
distressingly uncertain, seeing that he goes 
ever in peril from accidents and from strikes 
and lock-outs — misfortunes for which social 
legislation can provide little help, and even 
labour organisation no adequate remedy. 
Moreover the proletarian when at work uses 
tools and machinery owned by another, his 
labour power is controlled by others' will, 
and he works for the benefit of a stranger. 
Payment by results is supposed to fulfil the 
collectivist and individualist demand of har- 
monising the earnings with the real value of 
the labour ; but in reality it furnishes the 
merest caricature of civic occupation, and 
the only privilege secured by the proletarian 
on piecework is as a rule the privilege of 
over-working himself. Finally we have to 
note the divorce of the proletarian from the 
soil, and the massing of the industrial 
workers that results from the concentration 
of industry. This matter will first be con- 
sidered. 

Agriculture in all its varieties, the associa- 
tion of life and work with what is termed 
" nature/' provides, as psychoanalysis has 
shown, extremely important sublimations of 



134 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

the incest wish. Otto Rank and Sachs x 
attribute to the inauguration of agriculture a 
role in the breaking-down of taboos. In actual 
fact, agriculture is the basis of civilisation, 
chronologically, economically, and psychically. 
In the ideology of all nations, union with 
the earth denotes union with the mother as 
primal source of energy, the creation of force 
out of that which is the very foundation of 
life. At the same time the earth (which can 
so exhaustively symbolise the mother in virtue 
of its protective and nutritive characteristics, 
its all-embracing qualities, and numerous other 
analogies) serves as the foundation of so 
effectively autonomous a system of work and 
enjoyment that it can persistently function 
for the sublimation of the incest wish. More- 
over, from this union with the soil springs 
fidelity to various traditions, an unaggressive 
national sentiment, stability. The French 
revolution gave an interesting demonstration 
that no progress can be achieved without 
such a foundation, for this revolution did 
not originate among the tillers of the soil, 
but among the town-dwellers, burghers and 
intellectuals, in whom there arose a powerful 
ideology aiming at the return to mother earth 

1 Die Bedeutung der Psychoanalyse fur die Geisteswis- 
senschaften, Wiesbaden, 1913, p. 73. 



ANARCHIST COMMUNISM 135 

and at the creation of force from the earth. 1 
The proletariat is the first social class which 
has been radically, we might say patho- 
logically, divorced from the soil. Whilst the 
urban bourgeoisie is saved from complete de- 
tachment from the soil because of its financial 
resources, power of mobility, and various 
other associations, the proletariat, owing to 
its poverty, and owing to long hours of labour 
and to atomisation (a proletarian characteristic 
which is nowise in conflict with concentration), 
has been exiled from the land. Proletarians 
lose all contact with the soil ; they lose all 
affective traditions, not excepting undogmatic 
traditions ; and they lose national sentiment, 
not because they have many opportunities 
for contact with the foreign world, but for 
internal reasons. Thus the proletariat can 
think of mankind only as a homogeneous, 
landless mass, like itself. The impulse to- 
wards emigration, though it often has a 
rationalistic basis, may in part arise from an 
exogamic trend. 2 

Every loss of tradition, especially if it be 
not associated with a material and general 

* Cf. the detailed account of this matter in Lorenz's 
previously quoted work. 

3 Cf. Wurzellosigkeit, Ahasuerismus, A. von Winterstein, 
Zur Psychoanalyse des Reisens, Imago, 191 2. 



136 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

rise in level, with new and more refined 
sublimations, brings danger in its train, for 
it engenders a tendency towards grave re- 
gression to older and coarser traditions. The 
proletariat, cut loose from the soil, yearns 
for a return to earth as an end in itself. With- 
out traditions, the proletariat nevertheless 
clings tenaciously to its Marxist dogmas. The 
workers, by strenuous toil, can secure no 
more than means for a penurious existence ; 
but they dream of the paradise which mother 
earth will provide. " Bountiful nature pro- 
vides for all/' writes Wilhelm Weitling. As 
we have seen, the anarchist communist status 
is the world of the mother regression. Lorenz 
insists that the communist movement is under 
the sign of man-to-man eroticism (Proletarians 
of all lands unite !) ; but, he says, the ideal 
to be attained is the pure mother principle. 
The contrast with the ideology of the French 
revolution is classical. In the last-named 
movement, even in its preparatory stages, 
interest was concentrated upon the land (the 
physiocratic doctrine) ; subsequently the An- 
taeus motif received its due meed of attention, 
this being in part the foundation of panegyrics 
of war. Here the earth is a basis, but not 
a goal ; the road leads through the earth, 
but not to the earth (introversion and re- 



ANARCHIST COMMUNISM 137 

generation, the deriving of force from the 
unconscious for the conscious). The ideology 
of " virtue " is anagogic, sublimatory, pro- 
gressive. Very different is it with communism. 
The preparatory theories, and, above all, the 
proletariat, have no dealings with the earth 
from which they have been estranged ; they 
apply to agriculture superficial analogies bor- 
rowed from industrial life, and they lack both 
knowledge of and feeling for the real nature 
of the agricultural problem. In especial the 
proletarian has no understanding for the moral 
value of non-exploiting private property in 
land, petty proprietorship — although in ulti- 
mate analysis this moral value is unquestion- 
ably not affectively conditioned. He regards 
a mechanical counterpart of industrial con- 
centration as essential. Since his own class 
is agglomerated and is devoid of private 
property, he depicts the return to the land 
as a mass movement, which would not be a 
collection of forces for further evolution, but 
an ascent into heaven for which evolution 
would be superfluous. Karl Kautsky x de- 
scribes the aim as communism in material 
production and anarchism in spiritual pro- 
duction. This phrase excellently sums up 
proletarian anarchist communism. The con- 

1 The Social Revolution. 



138 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

dition cannot be a perfect one, for in that 
case it would forfeit the proletarian class 
character. The goal of the proletarian brethren 
is not the womb, but a far more social mother 
community. And despite all hostility for the 
actual father, there may still, in such a com- 
munity, remain a place for the father. The 
intention to bring about the involution or 
at least the reduction of the division of labour, 1 
is likewise connected with the general return 
to earth. Gustave le Bon's saying, that social- 
ism is the religion of persons who in the 
contemporary world have been deprived of 
their foothold, may be restated by saying 
that proletarian ideology, arising in the souls 
of those who are divorced from the soil, 
aspires towards complete regression to earth. 
The substratum of communist Russia is con- 
stituted, on the one hand by a still extant 
primeval agrarian communism, and on the 
other hand by the ." class-conscious " prole- 
tariat of an extensively small but intensively 
highly developed industry — a proletariat which 
has adopted the role of the old-time Varangian 
invaders. 

1 Cf. Kropotkin, op. cit., Chap. XV., etc. 



ANARCHIST COMMUNISM 139 



VI 



Infantile El Dorado Fantasy of 
Communism 

It is no mere empty simile to say that the 
proletariat wishes to unite itself into a huge 
family community. The communist principle, 
work according to power, consumption accord- 
ing to need, is in its essence an infantile 
principle. Stress is not laid on the develop- 
ment of the powers, for communists hope to 
get along with very little work ! Stress is 
laid upon voluntary, direct, spontaneous sym- 
pathy with the community ; .upon obedience 
inspired by the personal impulse of the doer ; 
upon the qualities of the " good " child. 
Enjoyment according to need relates no less 
clearly to the childish existence. The child 
does not fend for itself ; its consumption is 
not regulated in accordance with the work 
it does. The characteristic of its position is 
that it is more often at odds with its parents 
on account of unsuitable wishes than on 
account of immoderate wishes ; very often 
trouble arises because of its unwillingness to 
accept something, especially some particular 
food. The principle of the peaceful regulation 



140 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

of needs, or that of the enforced regulation 
of needs, is maintained in full validity. On 
the one hand, communism proposes to abolish 
all work which produces a disagreeable feeling 
of fatigue (this is communism in the anarchistic 
form) ; on the other hand, it proposes in 
case of need to constrain people to the per- 
formance of certain disagreeable tasks. What 
is lacking to the whole system is an indirectly 
applicable coercion of life ; a constraint which, 
as is needful, will demand from human beings 
vigorous work ; but which — notably through 
the free choice of occupation and the honour- 
ing of toil — shall create a specific and some- 
what severe hedonism of labour. This form 
of labour is a strongly sublimated adult form, 
whereas the form of labour under communism 
is a dualism of childish play and childish 
learning. We may regard as an emanation 
of this, Kautsky's naive formula concerning 
communism in economic life and anarchism 
in spiritual life, which involves a reversal of 
the primitive relationship of play in the 
physical field and compulsory work in the 
intellectual field. This compromise formation 
between the wish on the one hand and the 
demands of reality on the other (the work 
of adults, especially of proletarian adults, is 
predominantly physical) is natural enough in 



ANARCHIST COMMUNISM 141 

the sedate Kautsky, a man of thoroughly 
scientific temperament. The more extreme 
anarchist communist conception involves the 
adoption of a coercion to associated labour — 
a coercion which is in due time to be replaced 
by voluntary impulse — the whole process being 
purely regressive. 

The progressive modification of communism, 
authoritarian collectivism, tends to an in- 
creasing extent to adopt the father principle, 
projecting into society the father who is just 
in the allotment of rewards ; this implies a 
transition from infantilism to the condition of 
riper youth, with at the same time a closer 
relationship to reality. We are already on the 
way to the real justice which makes use of 
the father merely as a principle of systematisa- 
tion ; we are on the way to adulthood. 

I must now approach a problem of extra- 
ordinary importance. It seems to me that 
the more extensive the regression towards the 
ideal of the embryonic condition, the less 
will this unceasing backward pursuit of the 
primitive horde constellation be crowned with 
success, and the more essential will it become 
to take into consideration the elements of 
reality. In fact the climax of the condition 
conflicting with the reality principle is the 
foetal condition, wiiere the environment is 



142 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

utterly different from our reality. The more 
the individual develops, the more manifold 
the ways in which he enters the sphere of 
our reality, and the more decisively therefore 
does the ontogenetic or the social motif super- 
sede the phylogenetic motif. For an under- 
standing of proletarian communism we need 
a far greater number of realist outlooks than 
we need for an understanding of absolute 
anarchism. As we approach the goal of man- 
hood, the relationships of the primitive horde 
pass from our ken. It may be open to question 
whether this interesting association of the 
forms of organisation with their contents 
exists along the whole line. I consider that 
to this extent at least there is such an asso- 
ciation, that we are justified in attempting 
to refute a communist theory which assumes 
a psychoanalytical complexion. I am think- 
ing of Paul Federn's theory. 1 Federn holds 
that communism, the abolition of private 
property, represents an action of the brethren 
against the father, and signifies the overthrow 
of paternal dominion. This idea is unsound 
in so far as the revolt against the father, 
and the communalisation of his privileges, do 
not represent a progressive motif, but a re- 

* Zur Psychologie der Revolution, Die Vaterlose Gesellschaft, 
Vienna and Leipzig, 19 19. 



ANARCHIST COMMUNISM 143 

gressive and titanic motif, whereas progress 
is synonymous with the disappearance of the 
whole situation characteristic of the primitive 
horde. From the outlook of progress, it is 
necessary that in the revolutionary struggle 
against the contemporary father, who is often 
regressive, use should be made of antipaternal 
regressive forces ; but as soon as the aim 
of regression has been attained, we find our- 
selves not on the remoter but on the hither 
side of the father. The intellectual cause of 
the error lies in the assumption that the 
condition of the primitive horde, and, speak- 
ing generally, our knowledge of the impulsive 
life as ascertained by psychoanalysis, provide 
a key for the understanding of life in its en- 
tirety, whereas it remains the preeminent task 
of psychoanalysis applied to higher spheres, to 
ascertain precisely what limits are imposed 
upon the influence of this factor. Whilst 
the decisive victory of the primitive factor 
affords an exhaustive explanation of anarch- 
ism, it is far from giving an exhaustive 
explanation of proletarian ideology. Even 
though we see that in extant society the 
father principle operates to some extent as 
a force hostile to progress, nevertheless no 
syllogism exists to convince us that progress 
is to be secured by the destruction of the 



144 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

father principle, by the gratification of the 
fatherhood wish of the brethren of the horde, 
perhaps in the form of a new paternal dominion 
(dictatorship) even stricter than the old. What 
we need is the further sublimation of the 
father principle, a further remove from the 
primitive horde. What we need, consequently, 
is not communism, but the generalisation of 
property (liberal socialism). If we must use 
the " dialect of original sin " we may say 
that this would be a society consisting only 
of fathers. But such an idea would be some- 
what of a caricature, and considering the 
matter simply from the libido outlook it 
could not be fully adapted to the primitive 
horde conception. A society based upon the 
generalisation of property would realise 
Federn's hope that the parricidal brand can 
be effaced from the brow of man. On the 
other hand, it would not signify the renewal 
and the final success (as Federn imagines) 
of the attempt of the clan brethren — no such 
success could ever be achieved. The generali- 
sation of property would imply a further 
evolution of extant society upon the founda- 
tion of preexistent development, and not upon 
the foundation of the renouncement of pre- 
existent development. It would be a society 
which would not only be fatherless, without 



ANARCHIST COMMUNISM 145 

paternal rule, but would also be motherless — 
not of course in the sense of lifelessness, but 
in the sense of the higher life, sublimation 
and not regression. 

Communism, nevertheless, does not propose 
the abandonment of such goods as progress 
has achieved. What communists, apart from 
a few enthusiasts for poverty, desire, is not 
the sacrifice of the acquirements of technical 
progress. For the establishment of the future 
society they look to a technical progress which 
is almost inconceivable to-day. 

Now herein lies the absurdity of communism. 
Herein we have a further self-revelation of 
communist infantilism. To the anarchist ab- 
surdity, which we stigmatised ^as the absurdity 
of a society of foetuses, there succeeds a 
mitigated absurdity, less uncongenial, less 
blatant, but in reality no less absurd. The 
communists aspire to found a society with 
undeveloped organisation in conjunction with 
marvellously developed technique. No one 
needs a profound knowledge of sociology to 
perceive the impossibility of carrying out 
such a plan. But the psychoanalyst will 
push his criticism a stage further, and w T ill 
discover traces of a manifestation with which 
the study of the psychology of individuals 
has long made him familiar. I refer to the 

10 



146 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

belief in the omnipotence of thought. 1 Speak- 
ing generally, a magical belief in the powers 
of thought is characteristic of the primitive 
stage » and above all of childhood. In the 
embryo there is no discrepancy between wish 
and reality (anarchism) ; in the subsequent 
course of development, the omnipotence of 
hallucination, gesture, and thought, becomes 
dominant. In totemism and compulsion 
neurosis, the part played by the omnipotence 
of thought is very striking. In communism, 
the manifestation of this fancy takes a some- 
what different form — a matter to which we 
shall refer presently. From the " omnipo- 
tence " of thought springs scientific research, 
the passage from imaginary to real activity. 
Should this transition fail to occur, we are 
confronted with a new species of the omnipo- 
tence of thought, side by side with the 
autoerotic manifestation of totemism ; this 
we may term the narcissistic variety. I mean 
that the above-described construction of reality 
makes a further (imaginary) concession, adopt- 

1 Cf . Totem und Tabu, III ; Ferenczi, Die Entwick- 
lungsstufen des Wirklichkeitssinnes, Internationale Zeitschrift 
fur Psychoanalyse, 191 3 ; J. MacCurdy, Die Allmacht der 
Gedanken und die Mutterleibsphantasie, Imago, 191 2. 

3 Cf. the present writer's essay, Activity and Passivity 
in the Growth of Civilisation [Hungarian], Huszadik Szazad, 
Budapest, 191 8. 



ANARCHIST COMMUNISM 147 

ing a form which corresponds better to the 
actual taking of reality into consideration ; 
it relates to the already developed ego, devotes 
the ego to the service of libido regression, 
and is therefore narcissistic. The idea of the 
omnipotence of thought manifests itself in 
the imaginary systems, and psychiatrists are 
familiar with it as paranoia. But the matter 
cannot be fully considered here. The im- 
portant point for our purposes is that com- 
munism looks for a development of a mass 
of requisites, for the high development of 
industrial technique, without any structural 
and real development of society. In actual 
fact, however, the advance of technique can 
only occur concomitantly with an advance 
in the division of labour, concomitantly with 
the advance of social differentiation. But that 
some fine day social differentiation may be- 
come superfluous, and that even its regression 
may be possible, is merely the idea of the 
dull pupil who has far too concrete a con- 
ception of the materials of knowledge, and 
who cherishes some such fancy as that know- 
ledge can be poured into the brain through 
a funnel. Just as the foetus is unable to 
use its hand, and just as a little child is 
incompetent to drive a motor car, so the 
fruits of technical progress will not be at 



148 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

the disposal of a community which is not 
a master of technique, which cannot develop 
technique, and which cannot even make an 
intelligent use of extant technical acquire- 
ments. The war might at least have taught 
this lesson. 1 

Consequently the rationalism of the pro- 
letariat, the blind faith in the power of in- 
dustrial technique, is an antisociological, 
imaginative, and infantile rationalism, although 
not identical with the tabula rasa rationalism 
of the anarchists. We shall shortly consider 
its proletarian foundations and its theoretical 
superstructure. Our immediate concern has 
merely been to elucidate the infantile El 
Dorado fantasy of the communists. 2 



VII 

Origins of Proletarian Ideology 

It may have struck the reader that I have 
failed to follow to its logical end the deduction 
of proletarian ideology from the proletarian 
mode of life, and that after describing the 

1 Cf. B. Boyneburg, Die Despotie der Mittel, Vienna and 
Leipzig, 1 91 9. 

3 The El Dorado fantasy is admirably described by P. Ernst, 
Der Zusammenbruch des Marxismus, Munich, 1919, p. 113. 



ANARCHIST COMMUNISM 149 

land complex I returned to the direct charac- 
terisation of communist regression. My reason 
was that a systematic description of the 
causes and forms of the communist movement 
would have lain beyond the scope of the 
present work, which is concerned only with 
such matters as come within the purview of 
the psychoanalyst. It therefore seemed more 
appropriate to examine characteristics and 
origins by turns. A glance at origins may 
now usefully precede a further study of 
characteristics. 

The land complex was not introduced for- 
tuitously. Capitalism, the institutional form 
whence the proletariat and proletarian com- 
munism are derived, is itself closely connected 
with the land problem. It is far from my 
intention to formulate hypotheses concerning 
the origin of capitalism, or to attempt an 
answer to the question why the application 
of liberal principles has led to the establish- 
ment of a social order which is neither liberal 
nor individualistic. Light is thrown upon 
the economic and sociological side of the 
problem by the works of liberal socialist 
writers, but, for my purposes, the state of 
affairs must be accepted as given. Never- 
theless I cannot refrain from a few remarks 
which concern our subject. What may be 



150 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

termed the leading trends of liberal socialism, 
those of Henry George and Franz Oppen- 
heimer, agree in representing that the unhappy 
developments of capitalism through which it 
has been brought into sharp contrast with 
individualism and free exchange, originated 
through the monopolisation of the land by 
individuals, or through the allowing of this 
system of monopoly to become established. 
The principles of equal rights and of private 
property were necessarily destroyed, for their 
very essence was injuriously affected by the 
economic identification of land with other 
things — seeing that land is not the outcome 
of human labour, is absolutely indispensable, 
and is not susceptible of increase, so that 
consequently its annexation by individuals 
is not private ownership properly speaking, 
but merely robbery sanctioned by custom. 
It is true that Oppenheimer considers that 
the main trouble does not lie in land owner- 
ship per se, but in large-scale landed pro- 
prietorship, which is the persistence of 
feudalism and the incorporation of the principle 
of domination, and cannot fail to poison the 
social order. It is probable, however, that 
a synthesis could be effected of George's and 
Oppenheimer's theories and the kindred pro- 
grams of action. Lorenz (op. cit.) reaches 



ANARCHIST COMMUNISM 151 

an outlook analogous to that of these two 
economists. He considers that the cause of 
regression to the condition of the primitive 
horde is to be found in the false identification 
of land with commodities. 

It is evident, however, that at the founda- 
tion of the matter there lies hid, not a 
generalised logical fallacy perpetrated by the 
liberal theorists, but some deeply rooted social 
constellation. As far as concerns large-scale 
landed proprietorship, there is a manifest 
connexion between the libidinous tie man- 
earth and the authoritative tie father-child. 
When the end of serfdom came, and when 
liberalism won the victory, large-scale landed 
proprietorship ought to have come to an end, 
earth-eroticism ought to have assumed the 
form of petty proprietorship, while the like- 
wise sublimated father principle should have 
indued the form of cooperative organisation. 
This did not happen, or at any rate not to 
a preponderant extent. Landed dominion 
persisted, although the libido tie of the 
" underlings " was to some extent loosened. 
Organisation upon the land did not keep 
pace with town development ; eluding a 
further sublimation of libido, it underwent 
fixation at a lower stage. Hence the dis- 
harmony in social evolution. Peculiarly 



152 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

characteristic of capitalism is the way in 
which this disharmony manifests itself by 
the lagging behind of agricultural production 
while industrial production advances. For 
reasons which cannot be adequately discussed, 
there has been a solution of continuity between 
the comparatively advanced portion of the 
social soul, and that portion which remains 
closer to fundamentals ; there has been a 
collision between real life and the " archaic " 
libido fixation. 1 The treatment of land as 
a commodity may, just like the spirit of 
mammonism, the regressive element of capital- 
ism as contrasted with the nobler individual- 
istic element, be explained as an extensive 
resurgence of (repressed) analeroticism. Such 
a degradation, such a symbolic transformation, 
of the earth, in conjunction with the febrile 
increase in the mobility of the bourgeoisie, 
and on the other hand the fixation of the 
old earth hedonism, constitute the libido con- 
stellation which threatens to destroy the in- 
dustrial sublimation. 

In accordance therewith, during the course 
of capitalist concentration, there occurred an 



1 Freud institutes a comparison between entail and the 
germ plasm, the unprogressive specific factor. Vorlesungen 
zur Einfiihrung in die Psychoanalyse, III, p. 482 ; Kleine 
Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, IV, p. 84. 



ANARCHIST COMMUNISM 153 

increase of that father motif which recalls 
large-scale landed proprietorship (trusts, the 
formation of propertyless proletarian masses, 
a " policy of social reform " as a secondary 
mitigation). In sharp contrast, however, to 
what took place under large-scale landed 
proprietorship, there simultaneously occurred 
a divorce from the soil, a lack of earth hedon- 
ism, insecurity, and landlessness. Hence arises 
the desire of the proletariat for a great re- 
gression and a return to earth, as a destructive 
aim. 

We are now confronted with the problem 
which presents itself in similar form in the 
psychology of the individual as well. Wishes 
always proceed from extant' reality. Which 
portion of reality do they approve, and which 
portion do they try to subvert ? It would, 
for example, be expedient to study dreams 
in order to ascertain what elements of the 
dream are a reproduction of the situation 
which functions as its basis, and what elements 
represent the true wish fantasy. We may 
certainly assume that a wish gratification of 
this kind, deviating from a realist modification 
of the facts, will completely transform a 
part of the reality (by the path of the easiest 
application of the libido) ; whereas it will 
cling tenaciously to another portion of the 



154 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

reality. This is what happens in connexion 
with proletarian ideology, which is not a 
critical project for reform, but an impulsive 
reaction against capitalist oppression. 

The most definitely progressive elements of 
capitalism, namely, formal freedom of ex- 
change, and private property, do not come 
into direct contact with the proletarian, and 
are not enjoyed by him. Consequently pro- 
letarians are inclined to seek the cause of 
their miseries in freedom of exchange and 
private property. The proletarian detests the 
authoritative elements of capitalism in their 
extant forms, but owing to his complete 
subordination and subjection he is incompetent 
to overcome them in the world of reality. 
Transforming them as it were in the sense 
of the Oedipus complex, he retains the power 
principle, endorses class egoism, and likewise 
acquiesces in mammonism in the form of 
historical materialism and in the form of 
indifference to agriculture. Finally, he wholly 
approves that class formation which subjects 
capitalism to the working class, since, for 
the orphaned proletarian individual, this class 
contains all the values of libido and struggle. 
The class becomes the symbol of the clan 
of the brethren, inspired with the aim of 
becoming father, of abolishing class and all 



ANARCHIST COMMUNISM 155 

distinctions of class, of fusing in the great 
regression. For the abolition of class does 
not in this connexion signify the abolition 
of unearned income, but the abolition of 
differences in income and of the occupational 
differentiation necessarily associated therewith. 
The characteristics that distinguish commun- 
ism from anarchism are likewise manifest. 
Whereas the regression of anarchism is im- 
mediate and direct, communism derives to 
a far greater extent from reality, reckoning 
with reality, and receiving from reality its 
formal manifestations. Its ambivalence is less 
conspicuous, the stress being transferred by 
communism, from unbridled force and un- 
restricted regression, to the 'fatherhood wish 
of the horde of brethren. Indeed, the inter- 
weaving with motifs akin to reality, especially 
in certain phases and varieties of the move- 
ment, is so remarkable, that a keen eye is 
requisite for the detection of the kernel which 
conflicts with the reality principle. 

Marxist ideology and the rationalism peculiar 
to that ideology cannot be fully analysed 
without a glance at the role of the machine. 
The machine is doubtless able to fulfil a very 
different psychical function from that fulfilled 
by the earth and by the living environment. 
Whereas these latter can become the objects 



156 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

of a general psychical community (earth 
hedonism, the feeling for nature), machines 
are introjective transferences, and at a higher 
stage they are projective transferences, of 
the bodily (working) organs. 1 They arouse 
a technico-rationalistic spirit. In virtue of 
their symbolism it seems probable that they 
can also act as psychical derivatives, but 
there are several obstacles to this. K. Biicher z 
maintains that the machine gradually loses 
the old rhythm ; new rhythms doubtless arise, 
but are not apperceived because of the 
specialisation of the workers, because they 
have become means to an end. Worth noting 
is J. ZitzlafFs 3 observation that in the higher 
stages of machine development the compre- 
hensive activity of the workman must increase, 
but this tendency is counteracted by the 
capitalist interest in keeping wages down — 
an interest hostile to production. It is also 
of decisive importance that the machine is 
neither the individual nor the collective pro- 
perty of the worker. The universal material- 
ism associated with machine development is 
accompanied by a hatred for the machine 

1 Cf. Ferenczi, Zur Psychogenese der Mechanik, Imago, 
1919, p. 394- 

a Arbeit und Rhythmus, 3rd edition, Leipzig, 1902, p. 418. 

3 Arbeitsgliederung in Maschinenbauunternehmungen, Jena, 
I9i3» PP. 30-8. 



ANARCHIST COMMUNISM 157 

which often finds expression in sabotage, and 
this supplies one component of the ardent 
antirationalism which is at work within com- 
munism, and of the fantasy of the absolute 
regression to the earth. The disturbance of 
equilibrium characteristic of capitalism, the 
fatality which has placed the acquirements 
of evolution at the service of regression, is 
markedly accentuated in proletarian ideology. 



VIII 

Marxism as a Social Psychosis 

Historical materialism, one of the main 
pillars of Marxist doctrine, is in part filched 
from capitalist mammonism, but has been 
reclad in a philosophical vesture which was 
prepared for Marx by Hegel, a thinker with 
a feudalist trend. Marx espoused the Hegelian 
dialectic with great energy, merely replacing 
spirit in that system by economics, conceived 
as autonomous, independent, mystically opera- 
tive. Ultimately capitalism was to be re- 
pudiated, but only through its own activities. 
At the highest stage of capitalist development 
would ensue the expropriation of the small 
number of large-scale capitalists who would 



158 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

then remain in existence, and the transition 
to communism would take place. Simul- 
taneously, historical materialism would cease 
to be applicable ; man would pass from the 
realm of necessity to the realm of freedom. 
Everything which might interfere with this 
development is to be regarded as unessential 
detail, as vestigial, as the manifestation of 
petty-bourgeois narrowness, and so on. The 
whole task of mankind is to be found in 
measures for accelerating transformation, in 
the overcoming of temporarily determined hin- 
drances, in tactics. 

This mystical materialism discerns in every- 
thing the ego impulse alone, the impulse to 
self-preservation, and, dependent thereon, the 
impulse to establish and maintain the power 
of class. To this extent it is rationalistic. 
It is likewise rationalistic in that it compresses 
all its doctrines into a rigid system of strict 
and inalterable determinism, predestined to a 
definite historical close, when it will be re- 
placed by an entirely different world, the 
anarchist communist kingdom of heaven. The 
applied form is likewise ultra-scientific, 
equipped with dry, technical designations and 
mathematical formulas. Nevertheless, the 
idolatrous character of the system, and the 
brusque stigmatisation as " unscientific " of 



ANARCHIST COMMUNISM 159 

all questions as to the " future state " (that 
is to say, as to the real aim of Marxism), 
suffice to arouse the suspicion that the whole 
has an affective rather than a rational basis. 
The idea of the salvation of the world by the 
proletarian class vividly recalls the motif of 
the role as saviour and the great good fortune 
of the youngest brother or some other person 
who has been despised and rejected ; * it 
signifies the wish fantasy of the son, who is 
inferior in power to the father, and longs 
to gain possession of the mother (earth, land, 
the world). For the rest, we have all the 
signs of a paranoid construction. The follow- 
ing characteristics confirm this conclusion. 
There is an exclusive stressing of the ego, 
which is however projected upon an impersonal 
Moloch, economics. The psychical significance 
of the machine, and the early disturbance 
of the proletarian's ego, are additional indi- 
cations ; a similar disturbance of the ego 
usually plays its part in the mechanism of 
paranoia, but in this case its uniform character 
as a class manifestation elucidates the mass 
summation of the psychosis. I have already 
referred to the megalomania, which is another 
characteristic of paranoia. Hand in hand 
with this goes delusion of persecution. The 

fee a x This matter is fully discussed by Lorenz, op. cit. 



160 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

exploitation of the proletariat by the bour- 
geoisie is grotesquely caricatured, so that all 
the institutions of the state, religious and 
moral systems, and even dominant scientific 
trends, are lumped together as methods of 
exploitation. I think there is good reason 
for the assertion, that Marxists are not free 
from the delusion of persecution ; they regard 
every attempt at social reform made by those 
who are not Marxist devotees as designed 
by the exploiters to mislead and befool the 
proletariat. The salvation fantasy is common 
in religious paranoia. 1 The wrapping-up of 
the essential irrationality in an excessively 
rigid rationalistic system 2 corresponds to the 
aimless rationalism of the Marxists. The 
shrewd dialectic of paranoiacs is familiar ; 
no less familiar is the manner in which they 
shut themselves away, erecting an impenetrable 
barrier between themselves and the rest of 
the world. Common to Marxism and paranoia 
are a dogmatic adhesion to doctrine and an 
equally uncritical scornful scepticism towards 
all extraneous ideas. The Marxist theory of 
value, which measures all value by labour 

1 Cf. Freud, Psychoanalytische Bemerkungen liber einen 
autobiographisch beschriebenen Fall von Paranoia, Kleine 
Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, II, p. 206. 

» Cf. Freud, Ueber soziale Wirkungen, p. 248. 



ANARCHIST COMMUNISM 161 

time, is an elementary example of the ration- 
alism of those who preach art for art's sake, 
of those in whose eyes " precision " outweighs 
knowledge. 

Two characteristics show clearly that it 
would be wrong to look upon Marxism simply 
as a "case" of paranoia. The terminal aim 
as an exit from the system, the act of redemp- 
tion which forces its way through the repres- 
sion, the deliberate combination of the terminal 
regression with the intermediate constructions, 
bear witness to the unique character of the 
social psychosis. Moreover, we cannot detect 
in the social psychosis that homosexual fixation 
plays an important part such as it is supposed 
to play in paranoia. It is, however, necessary 
to point out that homosexuality associated 
with paranoia is not primary, but is a psychical, 
narcissistic construction. Therein, likewise, 
the important point is the entangling of the 
ego in the disorders of the libido develop- 
ment. 1 In this connexion there forces itself 
on our attention a comparison with a move- 
ment which exhibits numerous resemblances 

* In the writings of Fourier, one of the most distinguished 
premarxian communists, we find strange expressions which 
recall the words coined by paraphrenics (for example : 
cdbaliste, composite, papillonne). Fourier was aware that a 
great many absurdities were intermingled with his ideas ; 
cf. the apparent dementia in paraphrenia. 

11 



162 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

to the Marxist movement ; I refer to Chris- 
tianity. The manifestations of the Oedipus 
complex, redemption, and the kingdom of 
heaven, which appear in Christian ideology 
in an archaic and metaphysical vesture, are 
poured by the Marxists into a scientific and 
materialistic mould. At first sight we may 
be allured by the notion that Christianity 
displays the characteristics of a compulsion 
neurosis, just as Freud declares that religion 
in general is "a universal compulsion neu- 
rosis." But there are many reasons for with- 
holding assent to such a view. We seek 
vainly for the typical symptoms of the before- 
mentioned disease, for investigation compul- 
sion, obvious indecision, a disharmony between 
ritual and conviction. As soon as Christianity 
had got beyond the primitive, anarchistic, 
antiritualistic attitude, equal attention was 
paid to ritual and to creed, and sometimes the 
preference was given to creed. 1 The important 

1 Judaism, on the other hand, with its hypertrophied 
ritual, its Talmudism, and its disdain for inner faith, displays 
a close kinship with compulsion neurosis. This may explain 
why Judaism could not conquer the world. It may not 
have been a chance matter that in the beginnings of the 
Christian and of the Marxist movement Jews played a leading 
part. Emancipation from compulsion neurosis (" salvation 
from ritual ") may be either sublimatory or profoundly 
regressive. Cf. Reik, Das Kolnidre, op. cit. ; also an un- 
published work by S. Feldmann dealing with the psycho- 



ANARCHIST COMMUNISM 163 

part which hallucinatory ideas play in Chris- 
tianity, makes that religion akin to para- 
phrenia and hysteria ; nevertheless, we en- 
counter in Christianity manic and depressive 
elements (ecstasy, seclusion from the world) 
which are foreign to communism. Taking all 
these points into consideration, it seems to 
me that they do not signify that communism 
is less regressive, but merely that the com- 
munist regression begins at a higher stage of 
evolution. The proletarians of the capitalist 
era are differentiated from the poor and the 
slaves of the classical world by far greater 
concentration, more systematic work, and more 
complete divorce from the soil-; the regression 
of the proletariat is rooted in a highly 
developed society and in the ego itself ; the pro- 
jection is not cosmologico-physical, but socio- 
economic. 1 Class, the machine, " education in 
the factory " (Marx), confer upon proletarian 
ideology the stamp of paranoia ; they give 
rise to the narcissistic idea of the omnipotence 
of thought, in contradistinction to totemism, 

analysis of Judaism. Concerning religion as a manifestation 
of compulsion neurosis, and philosophy as a manifestation 
of paranoia, consult Rank, Der Kunstler, 3rd edition, 
Vienna, 191 8, p. 60. 

1 Christianity was far less concerned with a direct onslaught 
upon slavery. Cf. F. X. Kiefl, Die Theorien des modernen 
Sozialismus uber den Ursprung des Christentums, Munich, 
1915. 



164 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

wherein there is noticed no contradiction 
between the rudimentary ego and the (auto- 
erotic) belief in omnipotence ; and in contra- 
distinction to the sufferer from compulsion 
neurosis, whose evolved ego negates the (auto- 
erotic) belief in omnipotence (" obsession " !). 
Here the ego itself becomes a means towards 
the (narcissistic) belief in omnipotence. Con- 
tributory causes, doubtless, are the specific 
insecurity of the existence of the proletarian 
as a free workman, homelessness, 1 and the 
premature labours of the proletarian child, 
whereby it is led to outgrow both the childish 
world of fable and the intellectual and aesthetic 
atmosphere of our civilisation. * 

The comparison of Marxist communism with 
Christianity and with the bourgeois revolution 
(the French revolution, with its peculiar differ- 
ences both from communism and from Chris- 
tianity) would be far more searching. Such a 
comparison, in conjunction with a systematic 
study of the neuropsychoses, could not fail 
to give valuable results, alike in the domain 
of the immanent problems, and in that of 
the relationships of individual and social 

1 Concerning the psychical significance of the home, and in 
especial concerning its mother significance, cf. Charlotte 
Perkins Gilman, The Home, its Work and Influence, New 
York, 1910, p. 22. 

a Cf. R. Tschudi, Das proletarische Kind, Zurich, 191 8. 



ANARCHIST COMMUNISM 165 

psychoses. I have previously referred to the 
contrasted schema of the French revolution. 
I may add here that in association with the 
capitalistic materialism which has been adopted 
and accentuated by the proletariat, certain 
elements of proletarian ideology were already 
manifest in the French revolution. Lorenz 
quotes from Taine a case in which a country 
landlord was murdered because he was re- 
ceiving from the state an annual income of 
thirty-six thousand francs, which would now 
be retained by the community. Here we 
already have in the germ the projection of 
historical materialism. But whilst the money 
element in this matter may justify inferences 
concerning anal-eroticism, materialism acquires 
in Marxism another complexion which is more 
general and which is completely antimaterial- 
istic, antirationalistic, and regressive, in its 
trend. A sentiment of justice together with 
rationalism are contributory when Marx 
demonstrates with the aid of the theory of 
surplus value that the worker does not receive 
an adequate equivalent for his toil. Yet the 
communistic aim, whose realisation will make 
the value of the work done utterly irrelevant, 
is adduced as a logical inference from Marxist 
principles. This shows us once again how 
justice, rationality, and analogous develop- 



166 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

mental values, can be turned to account in 
a reversionary canalisation of regression. 



IX 

Bolshevism 

Marxism loses much of its precision in the 
form of social democracy, where the trade 
unions in especial stand for moderation, for 
compliance with realist demands, and for 
collaboration with bourgeois democracy. The 
trade unions, indeed, in contrast with the 
class which takes its stand upon the doctrine 
of increasing misery and unalloyed Marxist 
" evolution/ ' represent the real working-class 
organisations engaged in the fight for economic 
advantages. Obviously the social democrats 
of the trade unions lack coherent aim and 
far-reaching impetus. In them the titanic 
energy idealised by Marxist theory is damped 
down and dispersed rather than sublimated 
(in so far as the trade unions fail to bring any 
cooperatives into being). The same remark 
applies to Bernstein's revisionist trend, which 
is almost completely devoid of regressive 
character. A peculiar compost, which I can 
touch upon only in passing, is presented by 



ANARCHIST COMMUNISM 167 

syndicalism. The adherents of this doctrine 
utterly reject the father principle, so that it 
culminates in a purely economic anarchism ; 
the increasing disregard of the communist 
aim, and the assigning of enhanced significance 
to the trade unions might perhaps be regarded 
as indications of an ameliorative process. A 
grave turn in the direction of psychosis is, 
however, manifest in bolshevism or Leninism. 
Owing to the war, this doctrine has risen to 
enormous power. I propose, therefore, to 
consider it in detail. 

The war, that great syndrome of the malady 
of our civilisation, brought about for a time 
an extensive feudalist regression even among 
those nations which had more or less com- 
pletely entered the bourgeois phase. Conse- 
quently the labour movement likewise expe- 
rienced a change in the same direction. On 
the one hand the dissolution of reality stimu- 
lated the desire for the anarchist paradise ; 
on the other hand the reign of force and the 
widespread introduction of coercive regulations 
aroused in the brethren of the proletarian 
clan the desire to secure the rights of father- 
hood. Socialism, which had been formed in 
the image of capitalism, remodelled itself on 
the feudalist example. A large proportion of 
the working class now espoused the dictator- 



168 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

ship of the proletariat sustained by bayonets 
and the inquisition ; hoped " to skip the 
capitalist phase " ; aspired to inaugurate a 
centralised, despotic, and mechanical kneading 
of society. There appeared, as H. Mann has 
aptly expressed it, ' ' a mixture of blood halitus 
and logarithms/ ' Bolshevism was so direct 
an issue from the war, that psychoanalysis 
has few observations to make in this field. 
Nevertheless, I must refer once more to the 
Psychology of Revolution by Paul Federn, 
who discerns in the development of the soviet 
system the birth of the fatherless society of 
the brethren, and perceives therein the evolu- 
tionary potentialities of society. I have endeav- 
oured to prove that these potentialities would 
not be realised through the victory of the 
brethren, but through the renewed sublimation 
of the father principle and a general remove 
from the condition of the primitive horde. 
In one of its forms the soviet system may 
really be an anagogic manifestation. But it 
cannot possibly be this as the restoration of 
patriarchal authority, which belongs to a 
lower stage of social evolution than bourgeois 
authority. It can only mark an advance as 
the cooperative democracy of free human 
beings, individual fathers as it were. This pre- 
supposes individual ownership. It is equally 



ANARCHIST COMMUNISM 169 

incompatible with the fusion and with the 
subjugation of individuals. It is possible that 
the extant occupational councils, if the situa- 
tion improves, may become the germs of such 
an evolution. This, however, would contrast, 
not only with bolshevism, but also with the 
peaceful communism which secures Federn's 
approval. Indeed, communism a la Federn 
is distinguished from bolshevism only by the 
lack of the outward insignia of the infringe- 
ment of individual autonomy. 

We may interpret bolshevism as a peculiar 
feudalist middle course between the direct 
regression of anarchism and the paranoid 
regression of Marxist socialism. It is most 
plainly characterised by its rejection of the 
written law and by the straightforward appli- 
cation of force. For the comparatively pro- 
gressive, regulative, and organisatory form of 
the father principle, it substitutes the earlier, 
despotic form. Bolshevism excludes from the 
community the capitalists who have hitherto 
functioned as " fathers," and also excludes 
the members of the mercantile class who 
have not typically functioned either as 
" fathers "or as " sons," in order to have 
free scope for its own neopaternal caesarism. 
The abandonment of all moral and other 
scruples, the disregard, the rejection on prin- 



170 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

ciple, of all distinctions whether individual 
or national, and the secondary, enforced, 
omnivorous extension of the class idea, throw 
a striking light upon the great regression, 
which is competent to acquire so effective a 
control even over the elements of reality. 
In like manner the rejection of the family 
indicates the libido concentration upon the 
foundation of a " united social family." I 
must emphasise my opinion that this does not 
imply an integrative or evolutionary develop- 
ment, any more than the mental constructions 
of the insane patient involve integration and 
evolution, even when they presuppose a kind 
of sexual repression. The exceptionally vigor- 
ous blazing up of militarism in the train of 
bolshevism, as well as other signs (the adoption 
of the feudalist policy of Jesuitism, corruption, 
secret agents, etc.), enable us to recognise 
that the bolshevisation of the world would 
signify its atomisation. 1 

The uniformity of the movement is doubtless 
one of the causes of its poverty in symbolism. 

1 The Leninist view, in accordance with which a stateless 
paradise is to ensue upon the phase of intensified terror, 
singularly recalls the mystical schema of introversion and 
regeneration (Silberer). We know, however, that we really 
have to do with an unmitigated reversion. Of course, in 
the ultimate issue there might ensue, instead of the result 
really aimed at, the birth of a new civilisation. (In decades 
or centuries ?) 



ANARCHIST COMMUNISM 171 

The general and compulsory use of the terms 
" comrade " or " brother " in the Soviet 
Republic is accordant with the whole spirit. 
Remarkably enough, under the Hungarian 
Soviet Dictatorship, the term used for " com- 
rade " was " elvtars." This signifies "one 
who holds the same views or principles," 
and the use of the term illustrates the dog- 
matist trend, Other practices remind us of 
the homogeneous horde of the brethren : for 
instance that everyone must be accounted a 
proletarian before he is worthy to be accounted 
a human being ; the official designation of 
an author's earnings as " wages " ; and so on. 
The effacement of differentiation is manifest 
in ideology as well as in administrative struc- 
ture. For example : " The soviet is not a 
talking group but a working group. 1 ' Sadism 
and masochism find the most manifold forms 
of expression (the " camp-followers "). As far 
as the colour red is concerned, this has had 
great official significance in the social demo- 
cratic movement, but in the bolshevist move- 
ment it has risen to supreme dominion. 
Psychologically, red can function as the symbol 
of three different concepts, love, sin, and the 
revolution. 1 It thus logically corresponds to 

1 At the sitting of the Budapest Psychoanalytical Society, 
in May, 1920, Ferenczi summarised the matter by saying 



172 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

uniformity, to the all-devouring action of the 
libido. Silberer * alludes to red as the colour 
of the philosopher's stone, of universal energy, 
and also as the colour of absolute love which 
knows nothing of conflict. The contrasted 
pair red and white which symbolises the 
opposed forces of bolshevism and the counter- 
revolution, is likewise of old date. Silberer 
points out that it expresses the contrasted 
pair man and woman, corresponding to the 
contrasted pair blood and bone ; and it would 
seem that we might substitute the mechani- 
cally interpreted schema of activity and 
passivity. Unquestionably it is not to the 
revolution in general, but only to the bolshevik 
revolution that the colour red owes this 
important role. 3 The official art of the Hun- 
garian Soviet Republic was the work of an 
ultrafuturist group of young poets and painters, 



that the flush of joy suggested love, the blush of 9hame 
suggested sin, and the flush of anger suggested revolution. 
In this matter he followed Freud. 

1 Op. cit. 

a From the psychological point of view it would be instruc- 
tive to compare the aesthetics of Hungarian bolshevism 
(March to July, 1919) with that of the earlier bourgeois social 
democratic revolution (October, 1918). In the October revolu- 
tion the tone was set by various distinctions, by nationalist 
and other specialities. On the day of the revolution the 
chrysanthemum served as symbol, and the name of the flower 
became the nickname of the revolution. 



ANARCHIST COMMUNISM 173 

the study of whose mentality would con- 
tribute valuable results to a ps3^chology of 
bolshevist intellectuals. There would loom 
largely in such a study the figure of the anar- 
chist who has been given a chance for the 
realisation of his aims. Speaking generally, 
bolshevism is characterised by the withdrawal 
of inhibitions and repressions, by a motor 
discharge, subject of course to the essential 
demands of Marxist orthodoxy. To some 
extent, however, bolshevism may be looked 
upon as a regressive dissolution of paranoiac 
rigidity, to enable the adherents of the move- 
ment to draw nearer to their goal. Anent 
the part played by Russianism in this develop- 
ment, I may refer to a valuable essay by 
H. Hess on The Brothers Karamazoff or the 
Destruction of Europe. 1 Hess traces the asso- 
ciations of the Russian psyche in its certainty 
that the overthrow of Europe is imminent. 
These associations are : regression into the 
Asiatic home, into the primal mother ; hos- 
tility to every ethical norm ; the unity of 
good and evil (the Demiurge = God-Devil, the 
regressive abolition of the condition of the 
primitive horde ?) ; chaos. He characterises 
the typical Russian in the following terms : 

1 Die Bruder Karamasoff oder der Untergang Europas, 
Neue Rundschau, 1920. 



174 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

" The Russian is dangerous, emotional, and 
irresponsible ; at the same time he has a 
tender conscience, is sensitive, dreamy, cruel, 
profoundly childlike.' ' We may regard the 
bolshevik as representing a transitional per- 
sonality between the proletarian of central 
and western Europe and the type described 
by Hess. 



X 

Conclusion 

I am fully aware that this disquisition is 
sketchy and elementary. A systematic survey 
and discussion, from the psychoanalytical 
standpoint, of the manifold varieties of anar- 
chist communism, a consideration of their 
sociological and psychological relationships, 
would require a much more comprehensive 
work. My aim has been to stimulate thought 
on the subject, and I have introduced socio- 
logical and critical considerations in passing 
merely, when these were indispensable. No 
far-reaching study of the psychology of the 
subject has been attempted ; nothing has been 
said concerning the psychical reactions of 
strikes ; tactical problems, etc., have hardly 



ANARCHIST COMMUNISM 175 

been considered at all. Unless compelled to 
do so, the author has not transcended the 
limits of the conflict with the reality principle 
which is of interest to psychoanalysts. In 
so far as the study I have initiated may, in 
a more expanded form, be found to possess 
sociological and political value, this value will 
consist in the demonstration that in ultimate 
analysis anarchist communism has a reac- 
tionary character. In matters of detail, 
psychoanalysis can only be regarded as an 
instrument of adequate investigation. It 
seems still more questionable for the time 
being whether these studies can advance the 
study of the psychology and psychiatry of 
the individual. In any case/ a knowledge of 
the considerations I have adduced may help 
to sharpen the vision of the practising psycho- 
analyst, and may even make it easier for him 
to discover hitherto unnoticed pathological 
mechanisms. 

A few associated themes still require men- 
tion. One of these is the psychoanalysis of 
the individuals who participate in and lead 
such movements. Analytical methods are 
likely to yield a rich harvest in this field. 
A few points may be mentioned. Quite a 
number of anarchists are dogmatic vegetarians 
and teetotallers, being influenced perhaps by 



176 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

the idea of a return to nature ; « the same 
remark applies to the excessive simplification 
of clothing, to the wearing of sandals, to the 
growing of beards. Young people of the 
anarchist communist persuasion, especially 
those who are Russian in origin or tastes, 
like to dress simply and yet conspicuously ; 
they wear grey jerseys ; the young men have 
very long hair, the young women very short 
hair. These manifestations lead us to infer 
the existence, in part of narcissism, and in 
part of bisexuality. Such narcissism may be 
an individual parallel of the narcissism which 
affects the proletarian class (absorption of the 
ego in regression, ultramodernism). Bisexu- 
ality may help to explain women's eager 
participation in advanced social movements. 
This andromorphism, this assumption of mas- 
culine characteristics, is so conspicuous, and 
psychoanalytical investigations disclose it so 
indubitably, that in women with ardent 
political convictions (in so far as their attitude 
is not mere conservatism or caprice) we have 
every reason to expect the discovery of mas- 
culine traits. Our first need, however, is for 



1 During the bolshevist episode in Hungary I heard an 
elderly anarchist say : " Henceforward we must cure our 
illnesses by natural methods ; we have got rid of the lawyers, 
and we must get rid of the doctors as well." 



ANARCHIST COMMUNISM 177 

facts, and in this respect the psychoanalytical 
study of individuals has more important 
tasks ! 

The first fruits to be expected from the 
continuation of study along the lines sug- 
gested in the present work will be the solu- 
tion of socio-psychological and methodological 
problems. What is the nature of the paral- 
lelism between the individual and society, 
and within what limits does that parallelism 
exist ? In what social movements is it most 
conspicuous ? What is the value of analogies 
between individual psychoses and social 
psychoses ? Can we from these analogies 
draw conclusions which would be useful for 
therapeutic purposes ? Such -questions can 
be answered as follows. The mechanical paral- 
lelism is more conspicuous, the more predomi- 
nant the regressive element ; progress involves 
increasing differentiation. Analogies certainly 
exist between individual psychoses and social 
psychoses, but social projection in the case 
of the community corresponds to the ego 
projection of the individual ; moreover, in 
society there are more extensive opportunities 
for contact with reality, but on the other 
hand there are wider possibilities for regression. 
The structural differences, in so far as they 
are not further reducible, may be grouped 

12 



178 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

around this nucleus. As far as therapy is 
concerned, in the social psychoses the canalisa- 
tion of the libido towards useful ends seems 
a valuable principle, but it is one which is 
not simply coincident with the adequate solu- 
tion of the social problem. When we con- 
template the matter from this outlook, we 
see that the liberal socialist movement bears 
to purely formal democracy and liberalism 
the same sort of relationship that psycho- 
analysis, with its demand for greater activity 
on the part of the physician, bears to the 
older, cathartic method of cure. That trend 
of liberal socialism which favours a mechanical 
break-up of landed property into small areas, 
and at the establishment of a system of petty 
proprietorship, wrests from ideal economic 
expediency a temporary concession in favour 
of transient psychical expediency— effecting 
so to speak a canalisation of libido. Just as 
the lower stage of repression avails itself of 
idealisation, so too in social life does the 
negative principle of the critical condemnation 
of antisocial wishes require to be supplemented 
by the positive principle of sublimation. But 
to follow up these considerations would lead 
us beyond the scope of the present work. 
I shall have achieved my aim if the psycho- 
analytical study initiated and continued 



ANARCHIST COMMUNISM 179 

therein should attract the attention of master 
minds, and if the tasks I have outlined should 
be earnestly undertaken by competent inves- 
tigators. 



GLOSSARY 

[With special acknowledgments to Dr. Ernest Jones, many 
of the definitions being taken from his Papers on Psycho- 
analysis.] 

Affect. Feeling ; the essential constituent of emotion. 

Algolagnia. Sexual excitement aroused by pain. When the 
excitement is caused by the infliction or by the witnessing 
of pain, we speak of Sadism. When the excitement is 
caused by the suffering of pain, we speak of Masochism. 

Ambivalence. The coexistence of vopposed feelings, e.g. 
love and hate. 

AnagOgic. Upward-tending, i.e. tending to promote an 
upward movement. Used figuratively in the moral 
sense. 

Anal-erotism. Sexual excitement aroused by stimulation of 
the anus. 

Autoerotism. Sexual excitement occurring independently of 
actual relations with another individual, and self -induced 
either physically or mentally. 

Canalisation. A term employed of the libido, which see. 
The diversion of the libido into a new channel. See 
Sublimation. 

Cathartic. Adjectival form of Catharsis, which see. 

Catharsis. The purging of the effects of a pent-up emotion 
by bringing it to the surface of consciousness. 

181 



182 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

Censor and Censorship. A figurative impersonation to denote 
the sum of repressive forces. Also spoken of as " the 
endopsychic censor." (See Repression.) 

Complex. A group of emotionally tinged ideas partially or 
entirely repressed. 

Compromise Formation. A compromise between memory 
and the repressive forces, whereby the partially repressed 
memory is permitted to enter consciousness, but in a 
disguised form. 

Compulsion Neurosis. A neurosis in which, by unconscious 
psychic determinism, the patient is compelled to think 
or act in a way which is usually repugnant to his 
conscious mind. 

Constellation. A group of emotionally invested ideas not 
repressed. 

Dementia praecox. A common form of insanity in which the 
patient loses contact with reality and withdraws into a 
world of his own imaginings. 

Electra Complex. Excessive attachment, sexually tinged, 
of the daughter for the father. The feminine counter- 
part of the Oedipus complex, which see. 

Endopsychic Censor. See Censor. 

Fixation. The arrest of an affect at a more primitive stage 
than that normally corresponding to the individual's 
age and development. Especially used of the fixation 
of a daughter's sexual affection upon the father (father- 
fixation, see Electra Complex) ; and of the fixation of 
a son's sexual affection upon the mother (mother-fixation 
see Oedipus Complex). 

Foreconscious. A region of the mind containing memory 
traces which can only be aroused by exceptionally strong 
stimuli or by special effort. 



GLOSSARY 183 

Fundamental Complexes. Those complexes that are universal 
constituents of the normal mind, notably the ego com- 
plex, the herd complex, and the sex complex. The 
term is also applied to the " nuclear complexes," 
which see. 

Homosexuality. Love for a member of the same sex. 

Idealisation. A form of projection (which see), wherein the 
mind projects an ideal of personality upon some real 
person — hero or beloved. 

Incest. Sexual act with a near relative, or the desire for 
this ; often unconscious. See Oedipus Complex and 
Electra Complex. 

Inspectionism. The desire to look at, especially the desire 
to look at the sexual organs or sexual acts, or at organs 
and acts mentally associated with sex. The counterpart 
of " exhibitionism." 

Introversion. The turning of mental interest inward, away 
from the realities of the outer world. 

Libidinous. Adjectival form of libido, which see. Must not 
be understood in the narrow sense of purely physical 
sexual desire. 

Libido. Sexual hunger ; the mental aspect of the sexual 
instinct. But by psychoanalysts the term " sexual " is 
used with very wide connotations, so that " libido " 
becomes almost synonymous with " psychic energy." 
Indeed, Tansley defines libido as " the psychic energy 
inherent in the great natural complexes, or becoming 
attached to any individual complex, and discharging 
itself along the appropriate conative channels." 

Masochism. See Algolagnia. 

Narcissism. The concentration of interest (usually sexual 
interest) upon one's own body and one's own personality 
in general. 



184 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SOCIOLOGY 

Nuclear Complexes. Freud gives this name to the Oedipus 
complex and the Electra complex. 

Oedipus Complex. The (usually unconscious) desire of a 
son to kill his father and possess his mother. 

Paranoia. A form of insanity characterised by systematic 
delusions. 

Paraphrenia. Freud's name for dementia praecox, which see. 

Projection. The ascribing to the outer world mental processes 
that are not recognised to be of personal origin ; a 
characteristic symptom in paranoia. 

Psychoanalysis. A study and analysis of man's unconscious 
motives and desires as shown in various nervous dis- 
turbances and in certain manifestations of everyday 
life in normal individuals. 

Reality Principle. The principle in virtue of which (for the 
needs of self-preservation and species-preservation) the 
growing organism has to become adapted to the exigencies 
of reality, has to subordinate to distant aims the imperious 
demand for instant gratification. 

Regression. The reversion of mental life, in some respects, 
to that characteristic of an earlier stage of development, 
often an infantile one. 

Repression. The keeping from consciousness of mental 
processes that would be painful to it. 

Reversion. See Regression. 

Sadism. See Algolagnia. 

Sublimation. The employment of energy belonging to a 
primitive instinct in a new and derived, i.e. non-primitive 
channel. E.g. the use of sexual energy in " intellectual " 
love or creative artistic work. 



Symbolism and Symbolisation. The means whereby the 
workings of 
scious mind. 



workings of the unconscious are veiled from the con- 



GLOSSARY 185 

Syndrome. A group of associated symptoms, appearing 
simultaneously or successively, so as to form a definite 
clinical picture of disease. 

Titan, the* A figurative impersonation of the unconscious. 
(See Unconscious.) 

Titanic. Adjectival form of Titan, which see. 

Traumata. Injuries, mental or bodily. " Sexual traumata " 
are experiences in the sphere of the sexual life, bodily 
or mental, which have produced a mental shock. 

Unconscious. A region of the mind normally inaccessible 
to consciousness. Often figuratively impersonated. 



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